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INDIAN
ROCK PAINTINGS OF THE
GREAT LAKES

by Selwyn Dewdney
and Kenneth E. Kidd

This book describes in word and
illustration the results of an exciting
quest on the part of its authors to dis-
cover and record Indian rock paintings
of Northern Ontario and Minnesota.
Numerous drawings were made from
these pictographs at a hundred dif-
ferent sites; the originals range in age
from four to five hundred years to a
thousand, and were done w'ith the
simplest materials: fingers for brushes,
fine clay impregnated with ferrous
oxide giving the characteristic red
paint. Where an overhanging rock
protected a vertical face from drip-
ping water or on dry, naked rock
faces the Indians recorded the forest
life with which they lived in intimate
association — deer, caribou, rabbit,
heron, trout, canoes, animal tracks —
and also abstractions which puzzle
and intrigue the modern viewer.
Many of the paintings could only
have been done from a canoe or a
convenient rock ledge.

Selwyn Dewdney travelled many
thousands of miles by canoe to make
the drawings of the pictographs which
illustrate every page of this fascinating
and attractive book. He provides also
a general analysis of the materials
used by the Indians, of their subject-
matter and the artistic rendering given
to it, and his artist's journal records
in detail the sites he visited, the paint-
ings he found at each, the com-
parisons among them that came to
mind, the references to rock paintings
in early literature of the Northwest.
Kenneth E. Kidd contributes a
valuable essay on the anthropological
background of the area, linking the
rock paintings with early cave art in,
for example, France and Spain, de-
scribing the life of the Indians in the

continued on back flap

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Indian Rock Paintings
of the Great Lakes

The Agawa Site, Lake Superior,

Near Devil's Bay, Lake of the Woods

■■■■■■

INDIAN

ROCK PAINTINGS
OF THE
GREAT LAKES

By Selwyn Dewdney and
Kenneth E. Kidd

PUBLISHED FOR THE QUETICO FOUNDATION
BY UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Quetico Foundation Series

1. the Indians of quetico. By E. S. Coatsworth

2. quetico geology. By V. B. Meen

3. canoe trails through quetico. By Keith Denis

4. INDIAN ROCK PAINTINGS OF THE GREAT LAKES. By

Selwyn Dewdney and Kenneth E. Kidd

The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous
assistance and advice of many individuals and organiza-
tions on which the four years of extensive field work
were so dependent. The Quetico Foundation is greatly
indebted to the Government of Ontario for its financial
assistance in the publication of this book.

Foreword

This book is the outcome of an exciting and challenging quest by Mr. Selwyn
Dewdney, artist and author, and Mr. Kenneth E. Kidd, Curator, Department
of Ethnology, Royal Ontario Museum, to discover and record the Indian rock
paintings, or pictographs as they are now called, of Northern Ontario. These
pictographs, which may be found on the rock faces along the waterways of
the Canadian Shield from Lake Mazinaw, north of Belleville, to the Ontario-
Manitoba boundary, provide evidence of the cultural achievements of the
early inhabitants of our Province. No doubt, the small symbols aroused the
speculative interest and curiosity of the early voyageurs and others who have
followed them. But it is only today, through the efforts of the authors of this
volume, as well as the Quetico Foundation, the Royal Ontario Museum, and
the Departments of the Government of Ontario, that they are being presented
to a wider audience.

Numbering well over a thousand individual drawings, the pictographs
have been obtained from approximately one hundred sites, the majority in
the region west of the Lakehead. Their origin dates back perhaps as much as
four hundred to five hundred years. Mr. Dewdney himself records that "no
artist ever handled simpler tools or materials than those employed by these
ancient picture-writers of the Shield region. Their paint came from the earth;
their fingers served for brushes. Wherever on a waterside cliff the over-
hanging rock protected a vertical face from seepage or dripping water and
the sun could dry it quickly after a storm, on naked rock faces where even
the tenacious lichens found too little moisture for survival, the Indian chose
his canvas. A majority of the recorded sites could only have been painted
from his bark canoe at varying water levels; a few only from convenient
rock ledges."

Although traces of black and white can be discerned at several sites, red
is the predominant colour. Fine clays impregnated with ferrous oxide undoubt-
edly form the ingredients for the red. The binder which has given the paintings
such enduring quality is, however, a mystery to this day.

The pictographs vary greatly in symmetry and detail. In some instances
the scenes depicted are marked by realism and beauty, while in others the
drawings are abstract and, by conventional standards, crude. They convey
an absorption with forest life — deer, caribou, rabbits, heron, trout, animal

tracks, hand-prints, and canoes — all of which were part of the realities of the
day in which the artist lived.

A large number of pictographs are to be found within Quetico Park's
1,750 square miles. In order better to assure the preservation of this natural
wilderness, it was my privilege two years ago, along with the President of the
United States, to establish a Committee consisting of residents of both Ontario
and of the United States. The Committee is making a notable contribution
to the establishment of a co-ordinated development plan for the Quetico-
Superior Area on both sides of the international border. The Quetico Founda-
tion materially assisted in fostering the establishment of this Committee.

In addition to this work, the Quetico Foundation has been engaged in a
variety of studies and educational projects. This volume is the fourth in the
series that has been published. The Government of Ontario is pleased to
have been associated with the Foundation and the Royal Ontario Museum
in this work. The publication of this volume should help to quicken
interest in our early history and stimulate further research and study.

Leslie M. Frost

Lindsay, Ontario Prime Minister of Ontario

October 18, 1961

Contents

Foreword, Honourable Leslie M. Frost v

Editorial Note viii

The Quest 1

How It Began 2

The Typical Site 4

The Search 6

Recording Techniques 8

Dating Clues 9

Interpretive and Ethnological Clues 11

The A boriginal A rtist 1 5

Preamble 16

Surface and Organization 16

Painting Media and Techniques 17

Form, Content, and Style 18

The Sites 21

Regional Divisions 22

Quetico-Superior Country 23

Border Lands West 38

Lake of the Woods 40

Northwestern Hinterland 55

West-Central Hinterland 66

Nipigon Country 74

Northeast Superior Shore 77

Eastern Hinterland 84

Voyageur Highway: East 92

Southeast Ontario 94

Anthropological Background: Kenneth E. Kidd 101

Appendixes 117

Bibliography 118

Pictograph Sites 121

Index 123

vii

Editorial Note

Pronunciations

The current standardized spelling of the word "Ojibwa," traditionally
pronounced and frequently still spelled Ojibway, illustrates the confusion
over the rendering of aboriginal Indian words for English-speaking readers.
Chippewa, Chippeway, and Otchipwe are other variants of the same word.
The following key to pronunciation of Ojibwa (y) words appearing in the
text was devised by a trained linguist, Mrs. Jean H. Rogers, and is based on
her study of the language as spoken by a northern band of Ojibwa at
Round Lake. As she warns: "This key is an attempt to give the closest
equivalents to Ojibwa sounds that exist in English. It is not phonetically
accurate, but the best that can be done within the limitations of English
sounds and English spelling."

Key
Consonants

Vowels

as in "key"
as in "say"
as in "bowl'

ewe
'pin"
as in "cut"

as m
as in

ch
sh
zh
z
h

as in "chin"
as in "she"
as in "azure"
as in "buzz"
as in "hill"
(before a consonant h
sounds like the ch in
"loch" or in the German "nacht")

Each Ojibwa word, on its first appearance in the text, is italicized, and
hyphenated to avoid confusion between the syllables. Thereafter it is treated
as a familiar word.

Illustrations

All the drawings reproduced in red, with the exception of the Mclnnes
drawing on page 72 and the Agawa deer on page 83, are drawn to the scale
of one inch to the foot, making them one twelfth actual size. An attempt has
been made to indicate the relative strength of the painting by heavy or light
shading, though the faintest have been exaggerated for visibility's sake. The
reproduced photographs of water colours from the Museum collection
are also, for the most part, greatly reduced in scale, but not consistently.
Readers interested in the actual size of the originals will find in most cases
that adjacent line drawings in red provide the needed clue. Other photographs
including the eight quadracolours, unless designated otherwise, were taken
by Selwyn Dewdney.

Vlll

The Quest

How It Began

About fifteen miles southeast of
Kenora, in the water labyrinth of
channels, bays, and islands so typical
of Lake of the Woods, you will come
to the outlet of Blindfold Lake.
Nearby, on the north shore, is a ver-
tical rock above a sloping ledge, its
face scattered with Indian paintings.
As a boy I knew the place. Yet I
gave the pictures only a glance, being
far more fascinated by the offerings
on the ledge, remnants of rotted
clothing, chipped and rusted enamel-
ware, and traces of tobacco.

Fifteen years later and 400 miles
farther east I ran across other Indian
paintings on the Fairy Point rocks of
Lake Missinaibi. Later, revisiting the
place with my wife, I made quick
sketches of a few of the symbols —
depressingly inaccurate ones, I was to
learn years later. Yet over all the
years that I knew of these two sites
it never occurred to me that there
might be others.

In 1955, as a book illustrator in
search of fresh source material on the
costume of early Indians in Canada,
I called on Kenneth E. Kidd, Curator

s>f dass wood lake

of Ethnology at the Royal Ontario
Museum. Recognizing each other as
acquaintances from college days, we
lunched together.

Only that summer Ken had viewed
the impressive Lac la Croix paintings
in Quetico Provincial Park. He al-
ready had reports of other sites in
the area, and was happy to hear from
me of another two. Would I, he
asked, be interested in recording the
Quetico sites?

It was Kenneth Kidd's vision of
a systematic recording programme
that launched and sustained the pro-

ject. Within the year he had enlisted
the support of the Quetico Founda-
tion and the co-operation of Ontario's
Department of Lands and Forests. In
the summer of '57 I recorded eleven
sites in the Quetico area, and in suc-
ceeding summers added to the number
in ever-widening areas of Ontario's
northland. Today the work Ken
initiated has resulted in my recording
well over a hundred sites, and ex-
tension of the project far beyond
Ontario's boundaries.

So far the highest incidence of sites
has been between Lake Superior and

the Manitoba boundary. Here (p. 3)
the land is so laced with natural water-
ways that one may paddle in almost
any direction, interrupted only by
brief carries. Here is one of the
continent's most accessible fishing and
hunting paradises, where increasing
numbers of wilderness-hungry visitors
annually renew their sanity. Here
privacy may still be found, and the
sense of isolation; where the only
mechanized sound is the reassuring
throb of a Beaver aircraft on fire pro-
tection patrol. Here, in the early
morning calm one may paddle around
a rocky point to glide silently within
hand reach of a looming cliff, and
stare in wonder at the mysterious red
markings of a vanished culture.

Scores of such experiences have
yet to rob me of the feeling of

suspense, of having been touched by
fingers out of the past. Nor can all
the details in the pages that follow
adequately convey the intimacy of a
visit to one such actual place.

The Typical Site

The photographs on the opposite
page and below were taken at a small
pictograph site on Twin Lakes, just
north of Highway 17 and thirty miles
east of Kenora. In the Canadian
Shield woodlands of Northern On-
tario, there are thousands of such
outcroppings of rock — usually granite
or gneiss — with vertical faces at the
water's edge.

Few places have such large areas
of bare rock as are seen here. Nor-
mally lichen growth of various sorts
covers the whole surface: coarse

Photograph by Klaus Prufer

leafy "rock tripe" on the upper faces;
crustose types, medium to fine in
texture and often of brilliant colour,
on the lower and more vertical faces;
and, wherever seepage is constant, a
fine-grained black variety that looks
much more like a stain than a lichen.

In both photographs the light areas
of rock are the lichen-free ones. Here
the only covering agents are the light,
pink stain of oxidized iron, the occa-
sional white streak of precipitated
lime, and — rarely, as here — the mys-
terious red markings of the aborigine.

Where the lime deposits form a
background the stronger paintings
stand out vividly, and can be photo-
graphed in black and white success-
fully. Sometimes lime solutions have
seeped down over the paintings,
obscuring them unless one moistens
them with water. Usually the iron
oxide of the pigment overlies the
same compound that stains the sur-
face from the weathering of minute
particles of iron ore in the rock. If,
then, the pigment is weak, it is diffi-
cult to see, and impossible to photo-
graph without colour film. Since the
underlying colour is essentially the
same it is doubtful whether colour
filters would help to increase the
contrast.

Normally the rock gets enough
moisture for lichen growth. It is only
when, as in this case, an overhang
ensures that rain and groundwater
seeping from above will drip clear of
a surface that lichens are discouraged.
However, a slanting rain will wet the
rock beneath an overhang, so that
frequent exposure to the drying action
of the sun is also needed to discourage
lichen growth. The Twin Lakes site
has a southern exposure. Others may
face the rising or the setting sun. So
far I have seen only three sites on
which the sun never shines. In such
cases the fuzzy green lichen which
often obscures them is easily scrubbed
off, unlike most of the crustose types
on sun-exposed faces, which are ex-
tremely tenacious. Lichens originate
in a symbiosis of algae with fungus
spores — both carried through the air.
Such a pair, lodged by accident on
the same rock nodule, or in the same
microscopic pore, lead a precarious

existence at best in normally lichen-
free surfaces.

At water level the action of ice
and waves tends to keep the rock
clean. The remarkable thing is that
such erosive agents seem to have had
little effect on the pictographs on sites
where they have obviously been so
exposed for decades or longer.

As a matter of record most of the
paintings are from two to five feet
above the present water levels. Here,
for instance, where the photograph
shows me working at a tracing, they
are within easy reach of a person
sitting or standing in a canoe.

It is difficult to generalize about
the typical location for a site. The
example illustrated here marks a
minor portage into an insignificant
lake. We do tend to find larger num-
bers of pictographs on the larger cliffs
facing the more travelled waterways;
but this is contradicted too often by
obviously important sites on small
rocks in out-of-the-way places.

Only two generalizations can be
made. The one colour favoured on
every site is the "Indian red" charac-
teristic of aboriginal paintings the
world over. A limited use of white is
made on two sites, of yellow on one,
and of black on another. All sites so
far found have been close to water,
and all reports of sites away from the
water have been traced to natural
stains of oxidized iron.

The Search

How does one go about finding
Indian rock paintings?

This question was uppermost in my
mind as my wife, three sons, and I
drove north and west early in the

Opposite:

F. H. Nohlgren reports a site
on the Saskatchewan River

Ojibwa at Northwest Bay pinpoint
a site on Footprint Lake

summer of 1957 to French Lake, the
Canadian access point to Quetico
Provincial Park. There, in a small
colony of Park officers, biologists, and
one botanist, my wife set up house-
keeping in a small prefabricated hut
while 1 set up my drawing table, got
out my maps, and proceeded to check
the reports I had brought from the
Museum with local information.

That summer established the pat-
tern I was to follow, with later refine-
ments, for the next three years.
People hearing of my work wrote in
reports; I proceeded to the nearest
jumping-orT point, where I checked
and pin-pointed the reports I had
and collected new ones. Everywhere
we went we talked to anyone and
everyone: campers, Lands and Forests
personnel, old-time residents, store-
keepers, youngsters, tourist operators,
and above all, local Indians.

We never knew where information
might pop up. A navy recruit hitch-
hiking from the Yukon to Halifax
gave us a location to check in British
Columbia; the Twin Lakes site we

got from the twelve-year-old son of a
Ranger. We had no way, either, of
separating fact from fancy. Reports
of a painted moose six feet high
turned out to be based on a tiny
painting that I could cover with my
hand. Pictographs on unnamed lakes
were reported as being on the shore
of a nearby named one.

As experience grew, a few working
rules established themselves. Where
there's smoke there's fire; the more
smoke, the bigger the fire. Expect
even the experts to disagree; all
memories are fallible. And, not least,
pictographs — like fish — are where
you find them!

It is the original Canadians who
are the best-informed in most locali-
ties. There's a special fascination
about the way an Ojibwa trapper
locates a site. First he will search
your map with his finger till he finds
the area of his registered trap line.
As you watch the finger move you can
tell that he is visualizing a frozen
shore along his route, recalling land-
marks as he searches his memory for

Photograph by Klaus Prufer

Photograph by Peter Dewdney

the one of many rock faces where
former inhabitants put their enig-
matical red marks. He pauses and
asks for a pencil, taking the one you
offer to retrace his winter trail. He
stops again, and asks for something
in Ojibwa. A friend pulls out a pocket
knife and opens the small blade. The
Indian moves the knife point care-
fully, then makes a microscopic mark
on the exact spot — as he remembers
it.

A timber cruiser or woods inspec-
tor will be equally precise; but by and
large he knows of fewer sites. Yet
even they and the Indians are not
infallible, and cannot always place a
location exactly. All are long on
memory, having trained themselves
by long experience to recall specific
landmarks.

Access to the sites varies tremen-
dously. Sometimes we could drive in
our Volks station wagon, with canoe
on top, to within a five-minute paddle
of a site. At others we might borrow
a "kicker" — bush term for outboard
motor boat — from the nearest Lands
and Forests Ranger Station for a
fifteen-mile trip by water from the
end of the road. And again the site
might be sixty miles from the nearest
road or rail. In such cases we holed
up and worked on drawings until a
Lands and Forests aircraft was going
that way on a fire patrol or a grub
run, and had room for two men and
a canoe. Then they would drop us off
for a few hours or a day to pick us
up on their return.

During the first summer, when I
was based in Ouetico Park, most of
the travelling was done by canoe,
with one of my sons in the bow. Two

very small and unreported sites were
discovered in this way; but only
eleven sites were recorded altogether.
In subsequent summers I took ad-
vantage of every mechanized means
available, and covered three times as
many sites. Nor did this preclude the
location of other unreported sites. On
two occasions we even spotted a site
from the air!

Such a feat was necessarily rare,
and exclusively the result of the
general ruddiness of the rock. At a
distance this is easy to confuse with
a rusty orange lichen, which more
than once has led us astray. The
pictographs themselves are so small,
and often so faint, that they are rarely
visible more than fifty feet away; and
on one occasion I passed a painting,
while working on others in the
vicinity, at least a dozen times before
I spotted it. Lighting variations ac-
count largely for this kind of ex-
perience. A faint painting on a light
rock, with the full glare of a noon-day
sun above, intensified by reflection
from the water below, can become
practically invisible.

Though I have recorded a hundred
sites in Ontario and northern Minne-
sota, there are many more to record.
Beyond, in the Provinces of Quebec,
Manitoba, and Saskatchewan there
are scores of others — many of them
unreported. Any reader who can pass
on information — or even rumours —
will be doing this work a great
service.

Recording Techniques

The drawings and paintings of the
Shield pictographs reproduced in this
book are based on direct copies of

Photograph by Klaus Prufer

Photograph by Peter Dewdney

the symbols as well as on photo-
graphs. In the beginning I had no
precedent to go by and had to work
out methods based on trial and error.

I began by using string "co-ordi-
nates" stretched across the rock at
right angles to each other, secured by
knots in rock crevices, by chewing
gum, and by other devices. By tedious
measurements from salient points of
each painting to the string I could
make an accurate scale copy. Later
I based my copies on a three-inch
grid lightly chalked on the rock, and
washed off afterwards.

Experimenting with transfer tech-
niques in my second summer I dis-
covered that Japanese rice-paper,
when sponged over wet rock, not only
clings beautifully to every irregularity
of almost any surface, but also be-
comes almost totally transparent.
Using a high quality Conte chalk I
could make direct tracings of all but
the very faintest paintings. Notations
as to lichen growth, cracks, height

above water, and so on, could be
made directly on this paper.

Approaching a new site I first
made quick sketches of the features
of each face (i.e., a rock plane over
which paintings were grouped or
scattered), and measured the dis-
tances between faces, designating
each, from left to right, by a Roman
numeral. Then I made the tracings,
which could if necessary be packed
away wet. Colour photographs fol-
lowed, and any time that was left was
spent noting such extras as compass
bearing of the face, depth of the
water, height of the cliff, and so on.
Site numbers (e.g., Site #33) merely
followed the sequence in which I re-
corded the sites; but do indicate an
increasing accuracy due to practice.

Dating Clues

Although it was not my work to
make estimates of the age of the
pictographs, I was responsible for re-
cording any dating clues a site might

Schoolcraft, 1851; unlocated site

Lawson, 1885; Lake of the Woods

offer. Outside of skin-diving I covered
all the angles I could think of, with
particular attention to lichen growth,
lime deposits, and weathering effects.
I also noted carefully the strength of
the pigment, for whatever value that
might have as a dating clue.

In a number of instances sites I
have recorded had already been illus-
trated: the Agawa site before 1850
by Schoolcraft, two by Lawson in
1885, and a dozen others by Mclnnes
around the turn of this century.
Examples appear in the margin. Com-
parisons of these with my records
should yield further historical clues.
In a few cases the paintings them-
selves offer historical clues, picturing
forms borrowed from the invading
European culture.

The painting of one symbol over
an earlier one is so rare in these
paintings (though common in ex-
amples on other continents) that it
seems of little use. More promising
is the overrunning of some paintings
by various species of lichen. Through
studies made by Roland Beschel, a
botanist currently at Queen's Univer-
sity, in Switzerland, Greenland, and
the Canadian Arctic, considerable
knowledge has accumulated of the
rates of lichen growth for various
species. One species, for instance,
tentatively identified by Professor
Beschel from colour photographs
taken at .5 metres as Rinodina oreina,
an extremely slow-growing species, has
overrun the greater part of Face II
on Site #27. The pigment underneath
is extraordinarily strong — as strong
to all appearances as the same colour
freshly squeezed from an artist's tube
today. If the lichen is Rinodina oreina

Mclnnes, 1902; unlocated Cliff Lake site

Evidence of European contact
(see pages 56, 42, 86)

the paint is at least a century old,
yet apparently unweathered,

Lime deposits vary in thickness
from a quarter of an inch to a barely
discernible film. On the Cuttle Lake
site a film over one pictograph is the
background for another painted over
it (p. 61). Since lime is a constituent
(though sometimes a minute one) of
most rocks, it seems likely that many
of these deposits come from ground
water that has dissolved the lime as
it passed through the rocks. It is just
possible, too, that phosphate of lime
from bird droppings has been dis-
solved at a greater height, and re-
emerged from the crack where the
deposit begins. Here again are pos-
sible dating clues.

During the first summer I made a
point of collecting pigment samples
from smeared areas where the paint
seemed thick. I was astonished to
find that I could get only a few re-
luctant crumbs by scraping with a

steel knife. With rocks softer than
granite the pigment is not so difficult
to detach, but again and again I have
found it so bonded to the rock that
it defied my efforts to remove it.
Compared with commercial pigments
used in this century, the Indian paint
stands up far better. In two instances
initials have been painted on the same
site as Indian paintings. In both cases
the modern paint is already wearing
thin.

A concentrated study of such fac-
tors by specialists, covering a group
of sites such as the nine in Whitefish
Bay on Lake of the Woods, might
contribute substantially to reasonable
conclusions about the age of the
Shield paintings.

Interpretive and Ethnological Clues

Few who view an Indian rock
painting can refrain from asking:
What does it mean? Once there is
any kind of break-through in dating

1 1

Above, and on opposite page:

Ojibwa birchbark scrolls
Courtesy, Keith Dalgettey

of knowledge or practice among the
Ojibwa north of the Great Lakes? If
so, they might be related to the Shield
rock paintings and my field work
ought to include a search for such
material.

There were two broad types of
birchbark inscriptions. Small sheets
usually less than five by twelve inches
were inscribed with characters that
served as reminders for incantations
that would heighten the owner's
prowess in hunting, love, or war.
These were designed for individuals
who bought them from a "doctor" as
"prescriptions" for their ailments. A
second kind of scroll was much larger
(up to six feet in length) and far
more complex. This was a sort of
combined textbook and prayer-book,
that gave directions for the initiation
ritual of the Mi-day -wi-win (Grand
Medicine Society) and also outlined
the basic Mi-day beliefs — all in the
form of picture-writing.

At Quetico Park that first summer
I had barely returned from my Bass-
wood visit when a Park Officer, Keith
Dalgetty, brought over from Fort
Frances his collection of eight song
scrolls, all that was left of a cache

the Shield pictographs it will begin
to be possible to relate specific sites
to specific historic or prehistoric cul-
tures. This in turn will provide some
basis for working out interpretations
of at least the paintings done within
the last three centuries.

For there is a considerable body of
knowledge about pictographic ma-
terial on rock, hide, and birchbark,
some of it recorded in the United
States at a time when living Indians
were still using, and could interpret it.

I am indebted to Frank B. Huba-
chek for my first glimpse of this
material during a visit I made to the
Wilderness Research Center in Min-
nesota in '57. Early in the nineteenth
century, Copway, Kohl, Warren, and
Schoolcraft accumulated a great deal
of valuable information; this was fol-
lowed by the more systematic work
of Mallery and Hoffman.

Very little was then known about
the Shield country north of Lake
Superior, and most of the pictographs
coming from the Great Lakes region
were Ojibwa birchbark inscriptions
from the Shield country south and
west of Superior. The question arose:
Were there any surviving remnants

of a hundred or more that had turned
up years earlier on the north shore of
Rainy Lake. Two summers later in
the English River country I was given
— for the Museum — a large Miday
scroll left ownerless by the death of
Francis Fisher, one of the last prac-
tising Miday "priests" in the area.
And the following year I was shown
one of several other large Miday
scrolls in the possession of a Lake of
the Woods practitioner (page 109).

Another responsibility I felt, along
with a natural curiosity, was to learn
what I could about current Indian
knowledge — if any — about the origin
or meaning of the rock paintings.

It soon became clear that no living
Indian knew who made the paintings,
when they were made, or what they
signified. There were only the vaguest
echoes of any tradition about them;
most of the little I could glean was
hearsay or conjecture.

It was otherwise, however, when
I began to inquire about associations
with the waterside rocks on which the
paintings appeared. Years ago a
veteran prospector, Jack Ennis, whom
I had met on a bush sketching trip
and stayed with a while, told me
stories he had heard from the Indians
of hairy-faced men who paddled their

canoes into the crevices of the rocks
along the north Superior shores. Jack
cited these stories as evidence that
the Vikings had been in the area. But
it is clear to me now that he had run
into the little-heeded belief in the
May-may-gway-shi.

The word is variously translated
into English. Among the Cree, where
these mysterious creatures are de-
scribed as little men only two or three
feet high living inside the rock, the
English is "fairy." Among the Ojibwa
various translations run from "ghost,"
"spirit," and "merman," even to
"monkey." When I consulted Canon
Sanderson (who was born a Cree but
has spent all his ministerial life among
the Saulteaux and Ojibwa) for a
literal translation, he said the first
two syllables mean "wonderful," but
he had no clue to the others. The best
rendering in English I could hazard
from the scores of descriptions I have
listened to would be "Rockmedicine
Man."

Authorities disagree on details, but
some features of the Maymaygway-
shi are common over wide areas.
They are said to live behind waterside
rock faces, especially those where
cracks or shallow caves suggest an
entrance. They are fond of fish, and

frequently — more out of mischief
than need — steal fish from Indian
nets. Since they cut the fish out of
the net instead of removing them nor-
mally the Indians get annoyed. Fre-
quently one is told of Indians,
determined to put an end to this,
who visit their nets in the gray of
early dawn to catch the Maymay-
gwayshi in the act. The Maymay-
gwayshi, heading for the home cliff,
are obliged to pass close to the
Indians. As they approach they put
their heads down in the bottom of
the canoe. Why? Because they are
ashamed of their faces. In the south
and east this is because their faces
are covered with fur or hair — "like
a monkey" one Nipigon Indian told
me, holding his two hands up so
finger and thumb encircled each eye.
In the north and west there is no
facial hair, the shame being due to
lack of a soft part to their nose.

Specially gifted Ojibwa shamans,
I was told, had the power to enter
the rock and exchange tobacco for
an extremely potent "rock medicine."
Many Indians to this day leave to-
bacco gifts on the ledges or in the
water as they pass certain rocks — "for
good luck," they usually explain.

Direct connections between the
rock paintings and the Maymay-
gwayshi are much harder to come
by. To date I have only a scattering
of comments with few confirmations.
A Deer Lake Indian told me, for
instance, that a rock painting of a

man with his arms held like this ( and
he held his own in a loose "surrender"
position) signified a Maymaygway-
shi. Another on Rainy Lake told me
that the Maymaygwayshi reached
their hands out of the water to leave
the red handprints on the rock. And
it is still a practice on Lake-of-the-
Woods to leave offerings of clothing,
tobacco, and "prayer-sticks" on the
rocks at the foot of a pictograph-
decorated face.

Another mythological creature of
great interest that may also be asso-
ciated frequently with the pictograph
sites is Mi-shi-pi-zhiw , literally the
Great Lynx, actually the Ojibwa
demi-god of the water. At Agawa we
have an authenticated likeness of this
sinister deity of swift or troubled
waters. In 1851 Henry Schoolcraft,
the Indian Agent at the American
Sault Ste Marie whose collection of
Ojibwa legends was the basis for
Longfellow's Hiawatha, published his
Intellectual Capacity and Character
of the Indian Race. Included in it
were birchbark renderings of two pic-
tograph sites painted by an Ojibwa
shaman-warrior who claimed the
special protection of Mishipizhiw,
and proved it by leading a war party
from the south to the north shore of
Lake Superior. There is no room
here for the material I collected in
interviews about the Great Lynx, still
feared and revered west and north of
the Sault. But more will be said about
the Agawa paintings (pages 79-83).

The Aboriginal Artist

Preamble

Since we do not yet know when the
paintings under study were made,
nor of what culture or cultures they
were an expression, any comments on
the unknown artists must be highly
speculative. It would, for instance,
make an enormous difference to our
attitude if we found that the paintings
were the result of ten successive
cultures spanning as many thousands
of years, compared with the product
of one culture within the space of a
century. Nor do we know whether the
paintings are the casual excursions
on to rock of persons habitually work-
ing on other surfaces such as hide,
pottery, "or bark, or were done ex-
clusively (and if so, rarely) on stone.
Yet for the artist-recorder's eye the
Shield sites do offer evidence of the
aboriginal artist's choice of working
surface, of spatial organization, of his
painting media and techniques, and
of his attitude as expressed in the
form, content, and style of his work.

Surface and Organization

We have already noted the artist's
preference for a vertical rock face
close to the water. The sites them-
selves show a bewildering variety of
locations, outside of this one factor,
and so it is with the character of the
faces themselves. Some are rough and
pitted or coarse-grained; some are
glaciated surfaces, some fracture
planes from earlier rock falls. Veins
of contrasting colour cross some;
cracks mar others. Sometimes irregu-
lar faces are chosen within hand-reach
of smooth, regular ones. There is
simply no evidence of any pattern of
choice.

When it comes to spatial organiza-
tion of the material on the chosen
face there is again the widest variety.
Normally design concerns the artist
when space becomes limited. Where
any lichen-free vertical face suffices
there is no spatial discipline: the
painter can put one symbol here and
another three feet away. He can
begin a pictograph on one plane, and
finish it around the corner on the
next. At Agawa, where we know that
certain symbols are related to each
other, we find some separated by as
much as fifty feet.

Yet the viewer will find as he turns
the pages that organization and design
are not entirely absent. At Cache Bay,
Painted Narrows, Red Rock, Hegman
Lake, and a dozen other sites there
are groups of obviously related
material that form compact, well-
designed compositions. We even find
a few instances where the natural
flaws of the surface are incorporated
into the whole concept, as in the
example below from Crooked Lake.

By and large, however, we cannot
find in these paintings any special

concern for either the nature of the
painting surface or the arrangement
of the symbols.

Painting Media and Techniques

There can be no doubt that almost
all the Shield pictographs were
painted with red ochres; a majority
by using a finger for a brush. But
what binder was used?

Red was the sacred colour for the
aborigine in many areas of North
America. Iron-stained earths and
rusted iron ores usually occurred
locally or could be obtained by trade.
Colours range from a rusty orange,
misnamed vermilion by some, to a
purplish brick-red, varying in strength
according to the proportion of clay.

On nearly every site finger-wide
outlines may be found; on only a few
are there lines too fine for a finger-
mark; and even some of the larger
forms show clear evidence that the
original outline was finger-painted.
Large areas were likely smeared by
the same hands that left their prints
on other faces.

We can scarcely suppose that the
same binding agent was used by
every Indian who painted a rock. But
it may be that some binders were
more permanent than others. Cer-
tainly most of the pigment now is
difficult to scrape off with a knife.
Why?

I found a clue to the answer in a
non-Indian painting on the Red Rock
site. Applied while dripping with the
binder — presumably the linseed oil
commonly used until this mid-century
— the burnt sienna pigment, though
still strong, rubbed off easily, leaving
only a faint pink stain on the rock.

Here, surely, the pigment was so
suspended in oil that it was separated
by a thin film from direct contact
with the rock grains.

It seems reasonable to deduce that
the water-soluble fish glues or egg
fluid available to the Indians would
create more opportunity of contact,
molecule for molecule, with the rock
grains than the equally available
sturgeon oil or bear grease. By the
same reasoning little or no binder
(i.e., water alone) — if no rain blew
on the face while the paint was drying
— would provide the ideal condition
for such bonding.

The initials painted by the vandal
in black commercial paint across the
likeness of Mishipizhiw at Agawa
can tell us a great deal. Dated 1937,
we can already see the "red" man's
paint gleaming through the weathered
texture of the "white" man's. Here,
facing west on the east shore of Lake
Superior, the cliff is exposed to the
fierce gales of the world's largest
freshwater lake. Waves and shore-ice
from below, a driving rain, sleet, and
snow from above expose this site to
extremes of weathering beyond any
other. We know that the Indian paint-
ings are at least a century and a half
old. Why have they endured, still
clearly discernible, for so long?

There are mysteries here that
theories such as mine do not alto-
gether satisfy. Yet common sense
suggests that various techniques and
materials would have been impro-
vised as circumstances and motives
varied. Some happy combinations
may have endured for a thousand
years where more recent paintings
weathered away completely.

Form, Content, and Style

The diagram above forms a rough
classification of all the symbols re-
corded in the hundred odd sites ex-
amined so far: more than 1,000
separate marks. Of these, roughly
half bear no recognizable likeness to
any known form and I designate them
as abstractions. Many of them are
single strokes occurring in groups or
series that suggest tally marks. The
remainder range from simple to rela-
tively complex forms.

The other half of the symbols sub-
divide roughly into five groups:
miscellaneous man-made objects,
hand-prints, other human subject

matter, animals, and composite — pre-
sumably mythological — creatures.

Do all these variations in form
represent varying cultures over a wide
time span, or are they the expression
of a single, but highly variable, cul-
ture? Since our present knowledge is
so limited we must examine them,
and reach conclusions about the men
who painted them, in the broadest
of terms only.

We are further handicapped by the
current confusion about the standards
by which a work of art may be
judged. It has been highly instructive
to note the reactions to the Shield

paintings of my fellow artists (in-
cluding the avant-garde types), which
range all the way from undisguised
boredom to real enthusiasm.

No such confusion existed in the
mind of Franz Boas, whose Primitive
Art remains one of the most intel-
ligent and well-informed attempts yet
made to evaluate the art of aboriginal
cultures. In referring to the "picto-
graphic representations of the Plains
Indians" he states that "their picto-
graphy never rises to the dignity of
an art." There can be little doubt that
he would be even less disposed to
accept the Shield paintings as "art."

Few artists would dispute that the
Bushman painting from South Africa
reproduced below has a greater
appeal as a human expression than
the Shield painting shown beside it.
Yet the presence of so obvious a
delight in human energy in the one
contrasts so strongly with its absence
in the other that we are compelled to
ask why. We cannot assume that the
American Indian was more stupid or
insensitive than the African. We must,
I think, assume that his motive for
making the painting differed.

Here Boas has something construc-
tive to say. In comparing the decora-

tion of ordinary clothing among the
Amur tribes of Siberia with that of
their shamans' costumes he remarks,
". . . the painted dresses of the shamans
are roughly executed. They represent
mythological concepts and have a
value solely on account of their mean-
ing. The interest does not center in the
form."

This gives us a useful vantage point
from which to view the variations of
the Shield pictographs. When we turn
to the renderings of human and
animal subject matter we get clear
indications of a parallel trend. Out of
thirty-five drawings of cervids barely
half show sufficient interest in the
subject to reveal whether they are
deer, moose, elk, or caribou; and only
five reveal the delight in form that is
so apparent in the European cave
paintings at Lascaux and Altamira.

We have already noted the lack of
action in human renderings. When
we look for facial details, or indica-
tions of hair or head-dress we find
the same lack of interest, with only
rare exceptions. Hands and feet are
ignored or indicated in the most
rudimentary way.

A second quite different tendency
appears among the recognizably ani-

mate forms, both animal and human:
distortion so startling as to be un-
accountable for by indifferent
draughtsmanship. This tendency leads
us away from simple naturalism into
a series of increasingly fantastic forms
in which the forms we know are lost
in a world of antlered dragons,
horned, fish-tailed humans, and other
nameless creatures. Beyond these
forms, veiled from our understanding
by a curtain of abstraction, lies the
wide range of unrecognizable sym-
bols; some of them, perhaps, simpli-
fied linear versions of dream-figures;
others suggesting unknown artifacts;
others again reminiscent of our own
arithmetical symbols. But in even the
most formal symbols, where sym-
metry is obviously intended, no care
is taken to achieve more than a care-
less correspondence between dupli-
cated forms. Nor can we say where
distortion ends and formalization
begins.

Considering Boas's distinction be-
tween form, as the visual aspect of
a painting, and content, as the in-
tended meaning, we may conclude
that there is strong evidence in the
Shield paintings of an interest in con-
tent that almost constantly overrides
the interest in form. We may further
suggest that the trend to distortion
and fantasy relates to the Indian's
known obsession with the importance
of dreams.

To all appearances the aboriginal
artist was groping toward the ex-
pression of the magical aspect of his
life, rather than taking pleasure in
the world of form around him. Essen-
tially, however, the origin and pur-
pose of these deceptively simple
paintings remain a mystery.

The Sites

1. aUETlCO-^UP£RIOROOUNTRy

2. BORDERLANDS WEST

3. LAKE OF THE. WOODS
6. NIPIGON COUNTRY

Z NORTH CAST SUPERIOR SHOR
% VOYAQSUfi H 1(3 M WAV EAST

Regional Divisions

The Canadian Shield rock paintings
described in this book are limited to
those so far recorded in Ontario and
adjacent Minnesota. In the pages that
follow, each site will be dealt with in
as much detail as space allows.
Actually, a small book could be
written about any one of the larger
sites.

Regional divisions on the map
above are purely arbitrary, as a con-
venience for the reader who wishes

to keep track of the general location
of the site under discussion. Com-
mencing with the Quetico-Superior
region where the work began, we
shall move westward along the border
country to Lake of the Woods, and
northward into Patricia District.
From there our survey will turn east-
ward through the hinterland to the
Nipigon country, thence to the Que-
bec boundary, and southeast to the
huge site at Bon Echo on Lake
Mazinaw.

Quetico-Superior Country

I have already mentioned setting
up our base camp at French Lake in
Quetico Provincial Park that first
summer of 1957. A few days after
arrival, an airlift via the Park "grub
run" brought my son Kee and me to
Basswood Lake at the south end of
the Park. An hour later we were
paddling north, heading for Agnes
Lake via Summer, Sultry, and Silence
lakes, along a route ringed by pencil
marks on our map that indicated the
likelihood of pictograph sites (p. 3).

My diary notes on July 9 that "We
have now passed through two areas

marked on our maps for possible
sites. There has been no sign of any-
thing remotely resembling a pict."
By noon of the following day we
were out on Agnes Lake, heading
south, our "hopes high, heightened
by enormous cliffs on right — awesome
overhang — magnificent colours." But
alas: "We examined every cliff face
minutely as we passed, from water-
line as high as we could see, and no
trace of picts. ... no picts on the
cliffs south-west of the Narrows. . . .
One island was left. . . . Paddling
around the east side we found a few

• ATIKOKAN

undistinguished-looking faces . . . and
at the base of one the barest indica-
tion of a pictograph. Kee took three
colour shots and I one b. & w. I
measured and sketched it." So the
first — and most unspectacular — site
was recorded.

We paddled north again on Agnes,
I with the sinking feeling that that
year's exceptionally high water had
covered all the sites but this. It was
with dragging paddle-strokes that we
explored a group of islands in the
centre of the lake. Then we were
suddenly staring at Site #2: fourteen
symbols of varying strength in various
shades of dull red. A bear, a canoe,
and several hand smears were easy to
identify. The rest were too abstract
or amorphous, with one exception.
The latter set our imaginations going
in a way that makes me smile now,
but also makes me less impatient with
wild interpretations from the un-
initiated. To my then untutored eyes
it looked like a monk and a monster
together in a boat. Since then I have
seen variations on the same theme:
in all likelihood two Maymaygway-
shi in a canoe, with upraised arms.
In this case I had yet to learn the
subtle distinction of shade and colour
between the Indian pigment and
natural rust stains on the rock, and
imagination did the rest.

With two sites figuratively under
our belts we set out hopefully for

Williams Lake. This was the most
definite report on our list. We had
even seen photographs of the paint-
ings. All reports but one agreed that
they were on a sizable cliff at the west
end. The exception placed it on a
neighbouring unnamed lake. As the
reader will have guessed we found
that the minority report was right.
Here we recorded three thunderbirds,
a canoe, two simple abstractions, and
a weird little moose. The next day
we found our fourth site on the little
unnamed lake between Agnes and
Kawnipi.

The Neguagon Reserve on Lac la
Croix, just west and south of Quetico
Park, is only a few miles north of the
pictographs on the big "Painted
Rock." There I interviewed Charlie
Ottertail, one of the few older
Indians who still cherished his ances-
tors' ways and beliefs. The sun had
set and the light was dim inside the
Ottertail cabin. "A small dark room,"
to quote from my diary, "the frail
but still vital Indian on the floor
under a grey blanket, rising on one
elbow to speak, sinking back between
speeches ... a lean intelligent face."

Yet there was little he knew about
the pictographs : only that he was sure
they had been there when the treaty
of 1873 was signed.

For sheer naturalism there are no
other paintings of moose that I have
seen in the Shield country to compare

Site #4

with the three on this site. All are
surely by the same hand, as is the
little antelope — or deer. Unique, too,
are the pipe-smoking figures; one be-
side an hour-glass figure and tracks,
the other not far from the initials
"L. R. 1781."

Each poses its mysteries.

Initials and date are pecked faintly
into the hard granite. The L is
coloured, seemingly with the identical
pigment used for the pipe-smoker.
The latter has the suggestion of a
feather head-dress. Is it hair that is
indicated on the other pipe-smoker?
In Schoolcraft's glossary of picto-
graph symbols an hour-glass figure is
interpreted as a "headless man." Yet
Kohl, another early student of the
Ojibwa, quotes an informant as say-
ing: "If it were an easy matter . . .
to guess what the signs mean they
would soon steal our birchbark books.
Hence all our ideas, thoughts and
persons are represented in various
mysterious disguises."

Many readers will already have
some familiarity with the European
cave paintings, notably those at Alta-
mira and Lascaux. Merely a nodding
acquaintance with these palaeolithic
masterpieces makes it clear to an
artist that their cultural milieu con-
trasted strongly with that of the Shield
artists. Even the Lac la Croix moose
lack the free-floating lines and flowing
rhythms of the better cave paintings.

Note: pipe bowl in water colour repro-
duction is inaccurate; line drawing is more
reliable. S.D.

And while we can no more guess at
the "caveman's" conscious purpose
than we can at our own aborigine's,
there can be no doubt about the
pleasure the former took in most of
the forms he chose to depict.

Paintings of hands are interpreted
by Schoolcraft as "have done"; by
Copway as a sign of death. Either
way we might interpret the group of
handprints at Lac la Croix that sur-
round a small, but unmistakable fox
as the record of a successful war
party, led by a chief with either the
personal or clan name of Fox. I still

like — but recognize as sheer con-
jecture— my translation of the exten-
sive smearing of pigment below this
group as saying in effect: "See what
we have done with the blood of our
enemies!"

It was from these smearings that I
scraped samples of pigment for
analysis in Toronto. The findings
identified the pigment as ferric oxide,
but the traces of organic material
which would indicate the binder were
so slight that carbon-dating was out
of the question. On top of that there
was no guarantee that the minute

quantities found did not represent
stray material out of the air that had
lodged accidentally on the surface of
the paint. I am hoping eventually to
find a slab of rock that has fallen
from a site so that a microscopic
study can be made of the pigment in
relation to the rock grain, and to
what extent and how permanently it
bonds itself to the rock.

I have dubbed the pictographs
illustrated above as the "Warrior
Group" on the assumption that the
half-length human figure is holding a
weapon. Faint but fascinating material

is scattered over this face: a mound-
like form, a caribou (or elk?) head,
and the suggestion — too faint to be
certain — of a human figure in a lodge.

I recorded this site in my first
summer, and was still using the
tedious techniques of string co-
ordinates and chalking out grids, pre-
viously described. The northern faces
here could be recorded from rocks
underneath; but it was otherwise with
the Warrior Group and the Fox
Group, painted on a sheer face that
rises overhead some thirty feet, and
descends an estimated eight to ten
feet underwater. Here they could
only have been painted from the
water, perhaps in early spring from
the ice; more likely in summer from
a canoe.

The day we recorded them a brisk
south wind brought waves sweeping
vigorously along the rock face. We
had a rope along the base of the cliff

that gave us some control of the
canoe, but my son Peter had also to
make sure the canoe was not slapped
against the rock. We had our hands
full: he with paddle and rope, I with
chalk and tape and sketch-book,
while the water tossed us up and
down and splashed my paper and
colours with aggravating persistence.

The Lac la Croix site is in a mag-
nificent setting: great blocks of the
granite bedrock rising in steps above
the water a hundred feet or more.

It is a mystery to me why not one
mention in the literature has been
found so far of a site on the main
water route to the West, passed an-
nually in the height of the fur-trade
days by a thousand canoes.

The Crooked Lake site, on the
Minnesota side of the border waters
south of Quetico, does appear in the
records, but on account of Sioux
arrows stuck in a cleft high above

the water, mentioned by the explorer
Mackenzie among others. Here,
where Crooked Lake narrows imper-
ceptibly into the lower Basswood
River, a great bulk of granite leans
ominously over the water, its walls
streaked with a rich mosaic of iron
stains, vari-coloured lichens, and
vivid deposits of precipitated lime.

Here man's art is apt to be un-
noticed, modestly appearing some
fifty yards south of this colour display.
Under one great overhang are the
"Sturgeon in Net" illustrated on page
16, and nearby two horned figures.
One of the latter is shown in half-
tone on the opposite page. The other
was so faint that I failed to notice it
even while working on its neighbours.

Farther along is the "Eccentric
Moose," with bell exaggerated into a
sort of beard; nearby a bull moose
beside a pelican (?). Another pelican
appears beside an unusually deep
canoe with a "medicine-flag" (?) at
the bow (or stern). There is an elk
here; and an elegant heron beside a
disc. Most interesting of all, to me,
is the tree beside the lodge, within the
latter a "bird-man," which Kenneth
Kidd suggests could be a shaman in
a steam-bath ritual. This is the only
recorded Shield pictograph that clearly
portrays a plant form.

Cache Bay, an extension of Lake
Saganaga at the southeast corner of
Quetico, was the first site Peter and

Opposite :

water colour
reproductions
of various
Crooked Lake
pictographs

I recorded in '58. Here is a pleasingly
compact group of human figures,
canoes, and tally marks tucked away
in the heart of the curl of quiet water
called Lily Pad Bay, on an incon-
spicuous rock far from the busy high-
way of the voyageurs to the south.

Farther east, on Northern Lights
Lake, we recorded two other sites,
one of them pin-pointed for us by
Jock Richardson of Saginaga Trading
Post. Allan Ruxton of Lands and
Forests ferried us in. Site #14 is on
a high rock visible across the bay.
Note the way the moose's stack is
rendered in the upper drawing. Site
#13 faces a channel in Nelson Bay
— a scattering of somewhat obscure
symbols, obviously by another hand.

There are petroglyphs, too, at
Cache Bay, reported by Gerry Payne
and still waiting to be recorded.

Neither Kee nor I was impressed
by the rocks we passed as we paddled

Above:

examples
from
Northern
Lights Lake,
Sites #13, #14

Right:

Cache Bay
group

south along the east shore of Darky
Lake's southernmost arm. Coming to
yet another rock, almost hidden by a
grove of young birch trees, we looked
up and gasped. High above the
birches a great black overhang was
poised. As we glided closer the screen
of foliage moved aside and revealed,
clear and startling, the "Heartless
Moose" with a hole where her heart
should have been, her bull calf fol-
lowing, the whole surrounded by tally
marks, tracks, and a vertical row of
discs.

Much else of interest was there:
the half-figure of a man aiming what
was surely a rifle, a group of canoes
protected by a likely version of Mi-
shipizhiw, and another canoe beside
a second serpentine form, painted
across two cracks with typical dis-
regard for the painting surface.

Since then the scouts at Moose
Lake in Minnesota have reported

Darky Lake cow moose
and calf. Note splayed
hooves and dew-claws
of cow's forefoot

A likely Mishipizhiw at Darky Lake

another small site on the opposite
shore that we had missed.

On the same trip that Kee and I
recorded the Darky Lake site we
paddled east to Agnes Lake, record-
ing three minor sites that are not
illustrated here. At the Narrows into
Burt Lake we found extensive iron
stains temptingly suggestive of an
early Ford car! Nearby, however,
were two genuine handprints and
some other faded material. From
there on we had no reports to search
for, and were delighted to run across

two little moose on the waterway
south of Hurlburt Lake. Finally, on
the west shore of Agnes, just opposite
the little island where we awaited
our airlift, we found two painted rab-
bits, and nearby four animals that I
judged to be Indian in origin: these
pecked or pounded into the rock but
so shallowly that we paddled past
them without seeing them at first,
although we knew they were there.

These are the only petroglyphs I
have found to date on a vertical rock
face. At Nett Lake, Cache Bay, Shoal

Darky Lake:
man with gun,
and projectile?

Lake, Sunset Channel on Lake of
the Woods, and Footprint Lake there
are other rock carvings, but all are
cut into horizontal rock faces.

During my first summer in Quetico
Park I heard vague rumours of a
site on the northwest corner. In '58
Ernest Oberholtzer, naturalist and
revered champion of conservation in
the United States, told me in Ranier
of a site on Quetico Lake. Later
Lloyd Rawn of Lands and Forests at
Fort Frances pin-pointed it for me.
But it was not until '59 that Peter
and I were able to hitch an airlift in
to the Narrows to find the picto-
graphs that are illustrated below. A
beautifully clear group, under a low
but bulky overhang, it contained a
number of unusual features from the
caribou (or elk) head, and one of the
few human figures with its sex clearly
indicated, to the long canoe in which
one of the occupants appears to be
standing with upright arms.

Experienced pictograph-hunters by
now, we looked thoroughly along the
rock faces to the east and west, and
were rewarded with a second site,
with two large and quite incompre-
hensible shapes. We finished the
tracings to the distant throb of our
Beaver, and I had barely focussed
the camera for the first photograph
when Art Colfer dropped out of the
sky. I recall that trip as the one when
Peter paid for our ride by spotting a
thin wisp of smoke from a lightning
fire far below. We circled twice be-
fore Art or I could spot it; and
minutes later a radio-alerted crew
was on its way from Park Head-
quarters to take care of it.

At least five minor sites remain to
be recorded in Quetico Park, all
small, but each with its contribution
to make to our total knowledge.

Ely, Minnesota, is the small mining
and tourist community through which
is funnelled the amazing flood of

Quetico Lake,
pictographs

Hegman Lake group

city-surfeited Americans who each
summer head north into the roadless
lake country of Superior National
Forest, over the border into Quetico
Park, and even beyond. University
professors, garage mechanics, boy
scouts, and harassed housewives in
their thousands arrive in Ely; some
with their own gear, some to get
every article and item they need from
the big canoe outfitters. Most of them
leave mechanization behind and go
in the hard way — by canoe.

Ely is the home of Sig Olson,
bushman, scholar, conservationist,
whose Singing Wilderness quietly and
sensitively renders the essence of
wilderness living. Here, too, lives Bill
Trygg, ex-ranger, student of Indian
lore, and champion of Indian rights.
A few miles north on the shore of

Basswood Lake is the modest group
of buildings that houses the Quetico-
Superior Wilderness Research Center,
where its Director, Clifford Ahlgren,
is quietly building an international
reputation for forestry research. Next
door is Frank B. Hubachek, another
passionate champion of conservation,
a founder of the Research Center,
and sponsor of many far-sighted
wilderness research projects on both
sides of the border. Sig Olson was
among the first to bring the Shield
pictographs to the Royal Ontario
Museum's attention; Bill Trygg
tracked down an obscure site on
Island River in the heart of Superior
National Forest; and "Hub" has
warmly supported the pictograph re-
cording project since its inception.

The Hegman Lake site is perhaps
the most photogenic of all I have re-
corded. A small, well-designed group,
it is painted in strong colour against
a lighter-than-usual granite back-
ground. Here was the first site I had
encountered that was well above the
water: a somewhat awkward one to
record, for Peter and Andre Vallieres,
his French-Canadian friend who was
with us that summer, had to hold me
by the shirt-tails so that I could lean
out far enough from the rock face to
focus the camera. Note the splayed
hooves and dew claws of the moose
which we have seen only once before,
on the Darky Lake site.

As we left, Andre pointed out a
huge, detached slab of granite below
the pictures that gave forth a dull
hollow sound when tapped with a
rock.

On the west shore of Burntside
Lake, only a short drive west of Ely,

Burntside Lake warriors

young Jim Anderson showed me a
most unusual site, • on a small face
screened from the lake by a healthy
growth of trees.

"This," I remarked in my notes,
"is the curiousest to date. . . . The
colour is clearly different from all
others and also its manner of applica-
tion. One gets the impression of a dye
rather than a pigment, applied with a
small stiff brush . . . [some] lines
have a sharp, clear edge, even where
the rock is rough."

The colour was a dull wine-gray,
The style, too, was different: a little
group of fighting figures with bows
and arrows; another group that
seemed to be dancing; a head with
eyes, nose, mouth, and a Plains type
of head-dress. Most astonishing of all
was a tiny abstraction of a moose, a
masterpiece of condensation. Here,
surely, close to the southern edge of
the Shield, we see the influence of
an impinging culture.

A short air-hop east of Ely through
the courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service

Center brought me to Site #17 on a
widening of Kawashiwi River. Of
much that was fragmentary and ob-
scure the symbol reproduced here
stood out clear though faint. An Ojib-
wa on nearby Tower Reserve called
it a "rocking-chair" — and laughed! A
Red Lake (Ontario) Ojibwa was sure
that it represented a deadfall trap.

It was a long winding lumber road
that took my wife and me, guided by
Bill Trygg, to the Island River
in the heart of Superior National
Forest. Here on an imposing block of
gabbro we found a small cross, and a
barely discernible handprint.

Earlier, with a piece of weathered
haematite, Bill had demonstrated his
ingenious theory of how the picto-
graphs were painted. Chalking a line
on a granite boulder with the ore, he
wet his finger and broadened the
stroke to a strong, clear finger-width.

Kawashiwi
River, south
of Alice Lake

Border Lands West

Between the Quetico-Superior area
and Lake of the Woods the border
country pictographs thin out. In Min-
nesota no more rock paintings have
shown up west of Hegman Lake. But
there are rock carvings on Spirit
Island in Nett Lake, a shallow body
of water with hundreds of acres of
wild rice in the heart of a thriving
Indian community. Scattered over the
flat rock along the north shore are
dozens of figures pecked into the
glacially polished rock.

On the Canadian side of Namakan
Narrows, and on a nearby island of
Namakan Lake, I recorded three sites
in 1958. My wife and I with our
seven-year-old Christopher paddled
in from the east end of Rainy Lake.
Our objective: a site mentioned by a

United States geologist, Joseph Nor-
wood. Conspicuous on the Canadian
shore of the Narrows is a serpent-
like vein of white feldspar, against a
background of dark schist. Norwood,
to borrow a quotation from Grace
Lee Nute's The Voyageur's Highway,
said of this that it "must be highly
esteemed by them, from the quantity
of vermilion bestowed on it, and the
number of animals depicted on the
face of the rock." This report, made
in 1849, is the earliest printed com-
ment I have yet found on a specific
Shield site.

Earlier that summer we had driven
from Ely to Crane Lake on the
American side, in an attempt to track
down persistent rumours of a site on
that lake. The reports were well
founded, but in an unexpected way.

At north
entrance,
Namakan
Narrows

At Arthur Pohlman's place I stared
in undisguised amazement at a slab
of rock from the Namakan site lean-
ing against the wall of his garage:
painted on it a white moose and a
red fish-like form. Pohlman and his
brother-in-law, Dr. J. A. Bolz, author
of Portage into the Past, had found
the 100-pound slab in imminent
danger of falling into the water, had
rescued it, and were only too happy
to accept my offer to deliver it to the
Royal Ontario Museum. There the
Namakan Stone now rests.

The opposite page shows the way
in which the stone, in situ, relates to
the neighbouring pictographs. White
pigment was also used on the peculiar
symbols to the right. It looks as if
the artist ran out of pigment or was
interrupted while painting the large-
eared moose (?) below. Whatever
the interruption, it revealed his pro-
cedure in painting a large area.

Paintings on a rough granite wall
around the corner are very simple — a
canoe, stick figures, crosses — all
badly weathered.

At the north end of the Narrows,
Site #23 is painted under a wide
overhang on a rock so dark that a
black and white photograph would
show nothing. A curious group, that
seems to have a story to tell. I could
not decide whether the moose's head
had scaled off or had never been
painted.

Site #25 is on an eight-foot wall of
rock on a small island near Berger's
fish camp. Visiting Mrs. Berger we
found a grand old pioneer woman
baking cookies for her grandchildren.
She showed us hundreds of artifacts
picked up on neighbouring sands
during low water in the spring. The
whole east end of Namakan Lake
must once have been an Indian para-
dise.

Where Namakan waters pour into
Rainy Lake we found some pigment

Site on Namakan Lake island

stains on a facing rock, but nothing
we could call a site. Nor in a circuit
of Rainy Lake on another occasion
were we able to find any paintings on
the south or east shores of Rainy.

Here in the Rainy Lake area, and
along the Rainy River, evidence can
be found of thousands of years of
human occupation. Almost every
amateur collection of artifacts in the
country includes at least two or three
projectile points from the Old Copper
culture. At Pither's Point Walter
Kenyon, digging for the Royal On-
tario Museum in an ancient mound,
found a copper fish-hook 5,000 years
old.

Only a few miles east of Fort
Frances is the Painted Narrows site,
on a small island near the railway
causeway. Among a number of large
and very faint paintings appears the
group illustrated here: an upside-
down canoe, a human figure, three
detached heads(?), and two weird
composite figures, both with three
feet. The more central of these is a
perfect example of the type of strange
linear figures suggestive of human or
animal forms, but with dream-like
appendages and projections that give
them an altogether incomprehensible
character. As far as I know these are
unique to the Shield pictographs.

Such groupings as this and those
we have already seen at Darky Lake
and Cache Bay seem to have a story-
telling purpose — perhaps here the
record of a drowning.

Lake of the Woods

When the Lake of the Woods has
been combed as thoroughly as the
Ouetico-Superior country the picto-

graph scores for the two regions
should stand about even. To date I
have recorded thirteen rock painting
sites, two petroglyph sites and one
lichenoglyph, the term I have coined
for pictographs scraped in lichen-
coated rock.

Whitefish Bay is properly a lake in
its own right, once regarded as such
by the Indians. Here half the sites are
concentrated. My second purely
arbitrary division takes in the lake
north and west of Aulneau Peninsula;

and the lake south of Aulneau forms
the third.

According to some historians, the
Siouan-speaking Assiniboines were
migrating out of this area into the
prairies from a.d. 1700 on, under
pressure from the Algonkian-speaking
Ojibwa, who have occupied the lake
since the mid-eighteenth century.

It is a curious fact that the two
sites I found the most difficult to
locate on the whole lake were among
the few in all of Canada to be listed

by Mallery, probably by way of
Lawson, who has left us partial
records of them.

By the third summer our expedi-
tion had become almost completely
mechanized, depending more and
more on motorboat and aircraft. In
this case, though the Lands and
Forests transported us to a camp-site
on Sunset Channel, the locations were
so vague that we took to the canoe,
my wife and two sons adding three
pairs of eyes to scan the shores. The
first day we circumnavigated in-
numerable islands north of Sunset
Channel, and would have been utterly
discouraged but for a visit to an
isolated fish camp where the fisher-
man told us of markings on a reef
just south of the Channel. After sup-
per that evening Irene suggested that
we paddle along the shore of Cliff
Island, to which we had already given
some attention, just to double-check.
A few miles from camp we found the
group of paintings shown here.

The petroglyph site was easy to
find from there; Mallery had placed
it half a mile east of the paintings,
and as soon as we saw the fisherman's
reef at the end of the half mile we
knew we had found it. This book does
not cover the rock carving sites but
I might remark in passing that the
characters were quite different from
those at Nett Lake. On Machin's
point in Shoal Lake the next year I
recorded further petroglyphs and pin-
pointed a third site northwest of
Rainy Lake for a future visit.

The paintings on Picture Rock
Point, Western Peninsula, are painted
on a thick, rough encrustation of
lime, and, with the exception of the
human figure, are obscure. But here,
as on most other Lake of the Woods
sites, we found offerings on a water-
lapped ledge: neatly folded clothing
and a towel, topped by a little pile of
tobacco. There were offerings, too, in
a crack below the equally modest site
at Portage Bay, a few miles west.

South of Aulneau Peninsula I have
so far recorded only two rock paint-
ing sites. Of these the pictographs on
Painted Rock Island are well known,
situated as they are on the boat chan-
nel between that island and Split
Rock. Sheer luck brought us to the
Obabikon Channel site.

In the summer of "'60 fires were so
prevalent that it was an imposition to
ask for help from the harassed staff
of Lands and Forests. So I turned to
Bill Fadden of Sioux Narrows, an ex-
perienced guide and old-timer, who
took to pictograph-hunting with all
the enthusiasm of a young archaeolo-
gist. Stopping over at Sioux Narrows
on my way west I enlisted his help
in tracking down three sites in White-
fish Bay; on my return two weeks
later he had discovered three others.

Speeding up the channel from
Sabaskong Bay into Obabikon Bay
we caught a glimpse of red through
the trees rather high up on the east
shore. On shore, expecting to find

another example of iron stains, we
were happily astonished to discover
the paintings shown here: two ser-
pentine figures, one with antlers, the
other with horns, symmetrically facing
a large turtle. To the left, rather
crudely painted on very rough granite,
was a serpent fifteen feet long, with
open mouth, ears, and three large
flippers — a veritable Ogopogo.

A deep cleft between the ledge we
stood on and the rock wall was almost
filled with dirt and rubble. Lying on
the ground were an ancient, weathered
overcoat, and various rags that had
rotted beyond recognition.

Northward, in Obabikon Narrows,
is a lichenoglyph on a boulder, a
devil-face that raises interesting ques-
tions about the original of the non-
Indian painted face at the Devil's
Gap, near Kenora.

The Painted Rock Island site is on
a rock that projects from the slope of
the surrounding shore like a great
flat-roofed dormer window. Here was

one of the few sites that faced directly
north, and, as one would expect, was
extensively overgrown with lichen.
Fortunately most of this was fairly
easy to scrub off with vigorous
sponging. We found no trace of any
*. • ?«v offerings here.

This is the one site that might be
related in form and apparent content
to the Miday birchbark scrolls. The
sacred bear stands above a rectangu-
lar structure beside a horned figure,
who might represent a powerful Mi-
day leader. A line leads directly to
/ ^ the typical drawing of a Miday lodge.

'\ To the right may be scon an elaborate

layout of rectangular forms with
"paths" from some to others.

Far to the left, badly obscured by
lichen and weathering, are other sug-
gestions of lodges or enclosures. In
the centre a weird abstraction sug-
gests a more than human form.
Finally, to the lower left, floats a
horned serpent-sturgeon, with pro-
jecting spines the length of its back.
A most unusual painting!

Painted Rock Island,
detail of figure

It was an awkward site to record.
We ran ropes down from trees high
up on the shore at either end of the
rock, and so secured the ends of a
long, heavy pole that I could use as
a rough scaffold from which to work.
If I had been the original artist I
should have preferred to paint this
from my canoe at a time when the
water was six or eight feet higher.

One item an intensive dating study
might include is the variation in water
levels of the larger lakes. Here, on
international waters, there should be
records going back a century or more,
that might suggest at least a minimal
possible date. Since even now there
is evidence of continuing practice of
the old ways among the Lake of the
Woods Indians some paintings might
be relatively recent. Yet the evidence
of pigment erosion and lichen growth
here suggest that this site is one of
the older, rather than the more recent
ones.

I have deliberately left the most
fascinating of the Lake of the Woods

Painted Rock Island,
detail of figure

sites to the last: the cluster of seven
sites in Whitefish Bay. Here the
master designer of water labyrinths,
after trying his hand at Quetico and
elsewhere, got down to work on his
magnum opus. Even old-timers stick
to the channels they know; and some
of the younger Indian guides have
been known to get confused.

The Blindfold site, some miles
north of the Bay but on the same side
of the lake, I had known as a boy.
Bruce and Dorothy Johnston, sum-
mer campers from Winnipeg, had
sent me, via the Museum, the location
and a description of the Sioux Nar-
rows site. But rumours and reports
from various sources of at least two
of the other sites gave only the
vaguest locations, and I am quite sure
that without Bill Fadden's knowledge
of the bay and keen interest in hunt-
ing for sites I should still be looking
for at least a couple of them.

Strangely, few residents, summer
or permanent, knew of these paint-
ings. Actually, unless one is paddling,
or drifting in an outboard motorboat,
the passerby has a poor chance of
seeing anything interesting along the
shore. It is a sad commentary on our
holiday habits that speed has become
such a mania that we are denying
ourselves some of the greatest
pleasures to be found in such waters,
not least the thrill of rediscovering
for oneself these mystifying remnants
of prehistory.

Yet I keep reminding myself that
as a boy at the Blindfold site, inter-

ested though I was in the Indian past
even then, it was the offerings I saw
on the ledge below that stayed in my
memory. Perhaps the very incompre-
hensibility of these paintings tends to
close off our interest. Certainly the
Blindfold paintings are as difficult to
read as any others.

What, for instance, is the affair on
a tripod to the lower left? A drum?
If so, it is quite unlike the Indian
drums we know of today. In the
centre (not illustrated here) is a
crude little moose, whose forebody
has almost disappeared under seepage
that may offer a dating clue. On the
extreme right of this face a monstrous
form beneath two upturned canoes
suggests the sinister Mishipizhiw.

The real interest, however, centres
in the symmetrical grouping shown
on the opposite page. A moose, un-
doubtedly, on the left. But what kind
of a creature do we see on the right?

I could not resist the temptation of
placing underneath this creature one
recorded in the Lake Baikal region
of south-central Siberia by A. P.
Okladnikov, a U.S.S.R. archaeologist
who has made extensive studies of
rock paintings and carvings in Eurasia.
The finger-painting technique, the
curious protuberance on the snout,
and the crested back all provide an
amazing coincidence of conception
and execution. It would be ridiculous,
of course, to assume even the most
tenuous of cultural links.

About three miles southeast of
Sioux Narrows Post Office, facing

# 1 %

early European fort'
lichen

west at the northern end of a bulky
outcrop of granite is Site #28. Big
blocks of rock-fall at the base of the
site gave me a footing for the record-
ing work, as they probably did origi-
nally for the painting.

The drawing in the top left margin
is surely an Indian's impression of an
early European fort, such as La
Verendrye may have built on Mas-
sacre Island. How else can one in-
terpret the flag, with a ball on top
of the mast, and the suggestion of
a pattern on the flag itself? The
triangular pennant flying from the
mast of an unusually deep and heavy-
looking "canoe" strongly reinforces
this impression of an intruding culture.

On Face II we see handprints, a
small man beside a serpent-monster,
the latter with jaws and fore-flipper,
and what appears to be a deer in a
canoe. That the latter is not so
strange a concept to the Indian as it
might be to others is demonstrated
in birchbark pictographs illustrated
and interpreted in Densmore's Chip-
pewa Customs. Here two families are
shown, each in its own canoe. In the
one a large bear is followed by three
small ones, with a catfish in the stern.
In the other three eagles are followed
by a bear. The animals represent the
clan of each person, the children in-
heriting their father's clan. It is inter-
esting to note that the old Indian
fashion, now disappeared, was for the
head of the family to take the bow
position, as a hunter logically would.

I recorded this site in the summer
of '58. Two years later, on the way
to greener fields with Bill Fadden, I
stopped off as we passed it to take
further photographs. In the interval

since my last visit someone had placed
some clothing, a bundle of sticks, and
tobacco on the rocks at the base.
The sticks were thumb-thick, peeled,
and daubed with red and blue paint.
What could they mean?

While I was out west, Bill made
enquiries of the local Ojibwa and was
told that these bundles were placed
on the rocks with clothing and to-
bacco when someone was sick, dif-
ferent colours being placed on the
sticks for different illnesses.

We found similar "prayer-sticks"
on three other Whitefish Bay sites
and nowhere else. Are these a sur-
vival of an ancient practice, or the
result of a recent cult among the
quite numerous non-Christian Indians
of the area? So far as I know no other
instances of this practice have been
observed. In Shoal Lake, where
Presbyterian Christianity is dominant,
only one Indian had heard of the
practice, and seemed not too well
informed about its significance. Much
remains to be learned here.

If I had had any doubts about the
connection between the pictographs
and the offerings, they were resolved
at the three other sites. In the Devil's
Bay site, the Annie Island site, and
the one just south of Devil's Bay, the
offerings were always directly below
the pictographs, as here.

Bill Fadden had also been told that
there were always just forty prayer-
sticks. In the two sites where the
bundle was intact this was true; in
the others the binding string had
rotted and some of the sticks had
floated away in the water. Bill also
remembered seeing an old Indian in
a bark canoe with his family many

Above, and on opposite page:
Face II of Sioux Narrows site

years ago flinging water with his
paddle on the rock at the Devil's
Hole and talking loudly, as if to an
unseen person.

The site on the northeast point of
Hayter Peninsula had a different kind
of surprise to offer — two, in fact. The

first was a new kind of symbol, which
from its obvious resemblance to a
checker-board I was inclined to eye
suspiciously. Yet it was in the authen-

Undeciphered paintings
25 feet above the water,
Hayter Peninsula site

tic colour, and the squares were filled
in an irregular fashion. Had the two
appeared in a European cave they
might have been dubbed "tectiforms."
They do suggest, for what it may be
worth, a weaving texture. Here there
were no prayer-sticks; but an old
china cup and other odds and ends
were visible in a horizontal crack
nearby.

Our recording work done, I was
just packing cameras and kit when I
noticed that Bill was still scanning
the rocks. It was a novel experience
to work with someone more anxious
than I to find another pictograph.
Bill pointed to a rock that stood
above and back from the waterside
face we had been working at. A most
unpromising place; I gave it only a
careless glance.

"Would that be anything up there?"
Bill wanted to know, pointing to a
rusty stain halfway up the other face.
A couple of hand and toeholds took
me up easily enough — and there was
another group of paintings!

Whoever had painted them must
have had some difficulty, or have been
very short-sighted; for to lean far
enough out to focus on the rock,
standing on a mere bit of a ledge,
one needed both hands. Fortunately
Peter was along that day, and we had
lots of rope. Bill anchored the rope
at the top of the cliff, and Peter, with
a bowline around his shoulders, had
both hands free to work on the
tracings and photographs as I handed
up the materials from below.

At the north end of Annie Island
we almost missed the sole but fasci-
nating pictograph on a beautiful
granite wall: a vertical zig-zag of

finger-width colour that ended in the
head of a Maymaygwayshi. Among
the rocks below, like a shorebird's
nest, we found another deposit of
clothing, prayer-sticks, and tobacco,
all as fresh as if they had been put
there yesterday. Small wonder that
we nearly missed the painting, for the
wall was streaked with black lichen
whose edges were scalloped in rhythm
with the undulations of the picto-
graph, offering perfect camouflage.

The same day that we recorded
these two sites we hunted high and
low for a site in Devil's Bay. It was
a beautiful day and we found the
obvious rock, but though we scanned
and scanned there was nothing on it.
Two weeks later we returned and
found it immediately in the centre of
the self-same rock, very faint but
clear. So much for the effect of glare
on visibility!

Apart from being somewhat larger
than any thunderbird hitherto re-
corded, there was nothing too notable
about this site.

I have yet to learn why Devil's
Bay is so named. Yet in Sabaskong
Bay there is a small rocky island in
the centre of which is a huge "nest"
of boulders, obviously an artifact —
though a laborious one — and the
island is named Devil Birdsnest
Island. Indians as far east as Lake
Nipigon refer to such constructions as
"Thunderbird's Nests." I have heard
of others, but this is the only one I've
seen.

The Devil's Hole is no more than
a deep, almost horizontal fissure,
averaging about five inches in width,
in the granite outcrop just north of
Devil's Bay on the west shore of the

Devil's Bay

Annie Island
site, associated
with "prayer sticks"

Devil's Hole Faces lb and III

southern arm of Whitefish. The ad-
jacent paintings seem to be merely
smears, except for one small abstrac-
tion. Some seventy feet farther south
is a far more interesting group: a
series of large abstractions that have
an unusual consistency of style and
dimensions, but leave the viewer clue-
less. In the fissure, I ought to add,
which goes farther back than the eye
can see, are traces of offerings, frag-
ments of chinaware, and so on.

By far the most interesting feature
of Site # 99, just south of Devil's
Bay, is the bison. In the summer of
'58 I got wind of a site on Mameig-
wess Lake said to have a buffalo
represented on it. Though it was off
my itinerary I drove in from High-
way 17 west of Ignace to have a
look at it, arriving at Jorgensen's

camp in a heavy rain. The Jorgensens
not only treated us to lunch but lent
us their boat and heavy slickers to
run across the lake to the site.

In driving rain, with little shelter
from the overhangs, Klaus Prufer and
I photographed the main features. It
was disappointing to find on my re-
turn to do a proper recording job the
next summer that what we had taken
for bison on our first visit was actually
a moose.

The first unmistakable bison I
found painted on a rock was far to
the north, on the Bloodvein River.
Here on Whitefish Bay, and a bare
hundred miles east of bison country
was another. This is not as accurate
a drawing as the Bloodvein Bison,
but more alive. Another seems to
have been painted to its left, but it

Devil's Hole. Face la

Whitefish Bay bison
{see also page 96)

is impossible to tell whether rock
erosion or deliberate distortion ac-
counts for the peculiar neck and head.

Two animal forms and a baker's
dozen of handprints make up the
other markings. On a ledge below
was a most handsome offering with
prayer-sticks. We carefully lifted one
corner of the neatly piled clothing to
find that it was all clean and in good
repair. No attempt had been made to
foist off second-rate articles on the
mysterious healers.

An impressive armada sailed from
Sioux Narrows on August 8, 1959:
the flagship, a big Lands and Forests
diesel, bearing myself, Irene, and
Christopher, following the Johnstons

who had pin-pointed the site earlier
in the summer, and a third high-
powered motor launch bearing
American friends. An hour later the
flotilla lay to in a maze of islands in
the centre of Whitefish Bay, com-
pletely "at sea." Nevertheless we
finally made our way through the
labyrinth to the most remarkable site
of the summer, on appropriately
named Picture Rock Island, which
we mistakenly identified at the time
as Fergus Island.

For individuality of setting this was
supreme — an eagle's eyrie rather than
an artist's easel, fifty feet and more
above the lake. The red of the paint-
ings is clearly visible 500 yards away.

Then, as one approaches, the red dis-
appears behind the lip of a twenty-
foot-wide ledge.

Looking up that day the place
seemed inaccessible; a sheer drop to
the water protected that approach
completely and there was no way
down from the top. However, with the
will there proved to be a circuitous
way, and the biggest difficulty was in
getting water up for the tracings.

On Face I the turtle, unusually
naturalistic compared with others
elsewhere, is clear and strong. The
undulating form in the centre, which
may have lost significant details under
the lichen, repeats a theme that
occurs with variations on six other
sites — notably the Annie Island site
we have just looked at. The ladder-
like form and the handprints are said
by some non-Indians in the locality
to refer to a raid on Ladder Lake by
the "Red Hand," a band of maraud-
ing Indians in Minnesota in the 1880's
or 90's. On Face II the reversed
brackets with vertical bar between is
a form that will be seen again at Red
Rock and Pictured Lake. Is the
animal canine, with the Samoyed tail
of an Eskimo dog? If so, it is very
recent, for the only dog known to the
early natives hereabout was a small
hunting animal. Yet it may not be a
dog at all; we have already seen how
readily, for reasons unknown to us,
natural forms could be distorted.

A child's handprint appears among
the others — or is it simply a small
painted hand? On this site it is diffi-
cult to tell whether the hands were
printed or painted. I can offer no
comment on the baffling form at the
centre right.

Face III has three exceptional
forms. The lower left figure seems
intended for a bird: note the sug-
gestion of feather tips on the wings.
The ladder-Maltese-cross character
in the centre and the seeming com-
bination of two abstracted animal
forms on the right are typical Shield
abstractions. But the faint, lime-
obscured human figure is almost a
brother to the central figure at Blind-
fold, and shares with half a dozen
others the artist's curious disinclina-
tion to close off the lower part of the
body.

It should also be mentioned that
the rock itself is most unusual: a
smooth concave curve of glacially
sculptured granite. The pigment
seems indissolubly bonded to the
rock — for how long is anybody's
guess.

Northwestern Hinterland

The arbitrary division we have
made between western and north-
western hinterlands follows the
northern line of the C.N.R. through
Minaki, Sioux Lookout, and Arm-

-If

strong. Although each year roads
snake their way farther north of this
line into the untouched wilderness,
quick access has been almost entirely
restricted to air travel. Of an esti-
mated total of sixty important sites
in the region only a third have been
recorded. The whole vast area is
currently administered, for forest pro-
tection, wild-life study and control,
and so on, from Sioux Lookout. Fires
raging in this area during the sum-
mers of 1960 and '61 have made
airlifts for other purposes impossible,
and all we have in the pages that
follow is a sampling of the total, most
of them collected during the summer
of 1959.

In the neighbouring Shield country
of northern Manitoba I already have
the same scattering of reports that
prefaced the finding of many others
in Ontario. A brief reconnaissance
trip I made to Lac la Ronge in
northern Saskatchewan tells the same
story. Much remains to be done.

The northernmost reported site in
Ontario is north of the fifty-fourth
parallel on the Sachigo River, near
Manitoba, a site I paddled past un-
knowingly on a trip with my father

Cochrane River Face VI

in 1928. This site and four others
were reported by Edward Rogers,
anthropologist at the Royal Ontario
Museum, who with his linguistically
gifted wife, Jean, spent the better part
of a year with an Ojibwa band in
the Round Lake area. Farther south
I owe John Macfie of Lands and
Forests the locations of a dozen sites
from Artery Lake to the Vermilion
River. Finally, the ubiquitous Mc-
Innes turned up sites at Cliff and
Route Lakes.

One of the luckiest breaks I had in
the summer of '59 was the chance to
fly with Jake Siegel, the Lands and
Forests pilot at Red Lake. A superb
flyer with a widespread reputation
for fire protection, he was the first
man I've met who literally wouldn't
hurt a fly; Peter and I saw him care-
fully herd one, trapped in the take-
off, across the windshield with his
hand to the open window — and free-
dom! For such a man the fire that
destroyed millions of living creatures
was a personal enemy. The following
year on the evening of my arrival at
Red Lake I learned that he had made
twenty-five separate flights that day,
carrying in men and supplies.

I should make it clear that I could
only get airlifts by prearrangement
with headquarters, and only then if
a Beaver aircraft were going in the
same general direction that I needed
to go, on an assigned fire patrol or
fire tower grub run.

The great advantage of pictograph
hunting by aircraft is that in a single
circling of a lake one can spot every
likely outcrop, and unstrap one's
canoe fifty feet from the likeliest,
saving hours of shore exploration.

Of the nine faces on the Cochrane
River site, a few miles north of Deer
Lake, and the most northerly site I
have so far recorded in Ontario, all
but the first, fourth, and fifth show
only vestigial traces and are not
illustrated here. It is a pity that this
site is so remote. Faces VA and VB
offer almost the full range of dating
clues: over-painting, lichen-encroach-
ment, exfoliation, and a wide range
of pigment intensities and hues.

The most interesting drawing is
the winged figure, unfortunately ob-
scured on the right side of the head
by chipping. A bird with a human
head? Was the head originally sym-
metrical, with the appendages on
either side representing a special hair-
do? Whether so or not, we shall find
two human figures on the Bloodvein
River site that suggest the same idea.

While at nearby Deer Lake waiting
for the plane to pick us up I spent
two hours interviewing John Meezis,
one of the older Indians, and a third
hour at the school. The summer
teacher, Miss Todd, let me take
charge of her seventeen children
(ages six to fifteen) for a drawing
experiment. The great majority, when
asked to draw a moose, a fish, a bird,
and a man, produced what any other
Canadian schoolchild might have
drawn. But four of the older children
drew female figures as hour-glass
forms with appended head and limbs;
and three of the four drew the arms
in a surrender position.

The Bloodvein River site was one
of those rare experiences that are the
supreme reward of pictograph-hunt-
ing. Here, some eighty miles north-
west of Red Lake, in the Lake

Winnipeg water-shed, was a beauti-
fully proportioned bison, and a
human figure with the most detail I
have yet recorded.

There was much else beside: the
two curious "wigglers" on Face I,
the canoe on Face II with figures in
the same manner as on Lake Nipigon
and far to the south at Site #2 on
Agnes Lake in Quetico Park. Face III
is a puzzling conglomeration of over-
painting and abstractions in which
little can be deciphered. I would guess
that the animal on the upper left is
a porcupine.

The northern exposure was un-
expected, and the question arises how
the rock came to be lichen-free at
the time it was chosen for a site.
Peter and I scrubbed off whole yards
of the fuzzy green species that had
grown over a good half of the
paintings.

Note the hair-do on the little man
on Face II, very like that on the
Cochrane River "Eagle-man."

On the opposite page is a copy of
the Bloodvein bison. The site is per-
haps a hundred miles north of the

parklands where the bison herds once
roamed; but the artist shows a
familiarity with the animal that sug-
gests either frequent hunting excur-
sions southward, or his own southern
origin.

There seemed to be — and I so
recorded it — a vague indication of
the heart in this bison, but I was still

Bloodvein
bison

?. ?

i i

puzzling over it when it was time to
go. The photographs convey the same
impression without being any more
decisive. A peculiar feature of the
feet is the way in which the hooves are
rendered as ovals. I was startled a
few months later, leafing through a
book on the Lascaux cave paintings,
to find exactly the same treatment.

Overleaf the "Bloodvein Shaman"
is illustrated. I so dubbed it the fol-
lowing winter after going through all
the Ojibwa birchbark drawings I
could find recorded in the literature.
Frequently in the scroll pictographs
zig-zag lines like those emerging from
the head of this figure are interpreted
as thoughts or magical power enter-

9 *®%M

11 it %

Face II (see text, page 58)

Bloodvein shaman

ing, or emanating from, the person's
eyes, ears, mouth, or head. Again,
on a number of Miday scrolls the
Miday priest is shown holding the
otter-skin or other medicine-bag from
which he and his fellow Midaywi-
win "shoot" power into initiates.

The lines at the side of the head
I would guess to be the same kind of
hair arrangement as we see on Face

II and on the "Eagle-man," but in
more detail.

The large canoe beneath and the
porcupine to the left might represent
the fighting prowess and clan of the
shaman. But I must emphasize that
these are only guesses.

The Sharpstone Lake site was
spotted from the air by Peter while
Jake and I were looking in other

Lower Manitou Narrows {see page 72)

Cuttle Lake, detail of lichen and pigment, Face I

directions for a hearsay site we had
picked up from a Little Grand Rapids
Indian. It provided a wide shelf of
rock that made an ideal landing-dock
for the plane while Jake waited the
half hour it took to trace and photo-
graph the rather sparse, faint mark-
ings. Since I stood in a foot of water
and could barely reach the higher
paintings this was obviously painted
from a canoe when the water was
higher. Some of the painting has
gone; for here, as so often occurs
with granite, large slices half an inch
thick had flaked off by exfoliation.
Had there been more time we might
have found a slab or two with pig-
ment on it in the shallow water; but
the wind was changing, and Jake's
plane was in no position to ignore
the fact.

We were very thankful for the
accuracy with which a Red Lake
Indian pin-pointed a site on a little

sliver of a lake west of Rex, north of
the English River. Luckily enough
the lake was too small for the pilot
to chance a take-off with Peter, my-
self, and canoe aboard. Consequently
we made a rendezvous for the end of
the afternoon on Rex Lake, and on
the way there spotted a second site.

Site #65 was next to a waterside
rock shelter where Peter slept in the
shade while I recorded the modest
group of two handprints, a circle, an
upside-down canoe, and a few other
vague markings. Site #66 was an
even more modest one: only a hand-
print, tally marks, and two vague
figures.

At Grassy Narrows, and south-
ward at two sites on Delaney Lake,
we recorded two likely Maymay-
gwayshi, a rudimentary moose, and
a cocky little turtle that had a very
human look about him. The real
pictograph find of the summer was

Sites west of Rex Lake

Samples
from
Delaney
Lake

not on any rock, but inscribed on a
seventy-inch birchbark scroll, left
ownerless by the death of the last
great Miday practitioner in the area,
Francis Fisher. Twelve human figures,
all armless, and six water creatures
appear on this, quite unlike anything
in the rock paintings. But two bears
are rendered in an identical way to
those shown on the Shield picto-
graphs.

When Chief Tabowaykeezhik
learned of the existence and purpose
of the Museum he gave the scroll to
me, along with the late Miday
"priest's" medicine bag, to be pre-
served for posterity in Toronto.

White Dog, just off the English
River, is the only site where the local
Indians had any interpretation to
offer for the pictographs. The animal
(painted in the usual red ochre) was
a white dog, the human figure a
woman. This came out while talking

to a group on the dock to which our
Beaver was tied. "How can you tell
it's a woman?" I asked one Indian.
He drew himself up with some dignity
to reply: "I am a man."

At another place and time a
Nipigon Indian told me of the "White
Dog Feast" in which a small dog
was eaten by members of the Miday-
wiwin as part of the ritual: "They
don't say, we're eating a dog. They
say we're eating a bear. They don't
cook it very much — they eat the
blood and everything — but I heard
they drink medicine before." The
bear, I might add, is the central
figure of the Miday ceremonies.

My second visit to Red Lake
yielded a site on that lake itself, to
which I was taken by Bob Sheppard,
a Provincial Police Officer who had
an unusual interest in, and under-
standing of, the local Indians. The
site was small and close to the water,

Red Lake pictographs

on a face that sloped outward at such
an angle that I had quite a time
getting the paper to cling to the rock.

The Red Lake highway runs past
Cliff Lake, on which Mclnnes re-
corded a site I have yet to track
down. With the help of Joe Vocelka,
who runs a popular tourist camp
there, we reached the one site known
on the Lake. "Lots of paint but little
to decipher/' my diary notes. "Dis-
appointed, we poked the nose of our
borrowed craft into every bay and
iniet except the northwest arm where,
we had been assured, there wasn't a
rock you could spit at. Not a sign of
Mclnnes' site. . . ."

Before it was flooded Lac Seul was
one of the paradise lakes of the north,
with countless sandy beaches, great
stands of white pine, winding creeks,
and lush swamps where the wild rice
grew thick and thousands of ducks
bred. Here were endless miles of
browsing for moose, and latterly
deer, with depths where great
sturgeon and fat lake trout lurked.
With the flooding at least five picto-
graph sites disappeared; and the only
clue to what they were like is in the
peripheral ones. The Old Copper
people were here, and who knows
what other wanderers before them.
Archaeologically the surface has
barely been scratched.

Here I spent two idyllic summers
in my late teens, and paddled south
on one occasion to pass within yards
of the Route Lake paintings. Years
later, staring at the pair of figures
shown on this painting, I was as
mystified as any reader will be. What
strange subtleties of aboriginal cul-
ture were manifested here?

Route Lake
pictographs

Route Lake, detail

Until recently the area between Lac
Seul and Lake Nipigon north of the
C.N.R. has been as difficult of access
as other parts of the northwestern
hinterland. However the new road
from Sioux Lookout to Armstrong
will open up the Pickle Crow road,
and be of great help in recording the
sites reported in the area. Flying out
of Sioux Lookout I have been able
so far to record only four which must
suffice to represent the many others.

I have John Macfie to thank for
his meticulous sketches and notes on

the Vermilion River site just south of
Carling Lake. Here, though there is
only a sprinkling of badly weathered
drawings, the setting is most unusual.
In an alcove of the glaciated granite,
against a glistening white reredos of
encrusted lime, the little red markings
appear like tiny icons. Passing
Indians still leave tobacco in the little
niche that is shown below.

A geological survey party ran into
two sites on Vincent Lake while I
was in "the Sioux" and passed them
on to the District Forester. There was

Left: |

Vincent
Lake

Right:

Schist ^ < ^ -

Lake

room for me on the airlift that
dropped off their supplies. Much of
the material was fragmentary and
obscure, except some arithmetical-
looking crosses and bars on Site
#56A.

Reports of sites in the Savant Lake
area were too vague to justify an
airlift. But I had, as I thought, a
fairly reliable location on Fairchild
Lake, one of a confusingly similar
series filling a thirty-mile east-west
fault. Flying south from Carling I
spotted a promising glow of red on a
rock 800 feet below. We landed long
enough to verify the site, then high-
tailed it for home in the threat of a

gathering storm. I made a sketch of
the landmarks from the air, assuming
that this was Fairchild Lake. How
wrong the assumption was became
clear two days later when we flew
over Fairchild in an Otter. Buffeted
by one rain squall after another we
vainly scanned /the lake below for
landmarks that weren't there. The site
turned up ten miles west of Fairchild,
on Schist Lake — an unreported site
that we had found by sheer mis-
management!

West-Central Hinterland

From Lake of the Woods eastward
to Lake Nipigon, south of the

Carling Lake (Vermilion River)

niche uAwrt
Joco/ IncJtcns
pi<$c* toSaecc

northern line of the C.N.R., there is
road access to within an easy water
journey of most of the sites.

It was a great time-saver, however,
to fly into Dryberry Lake from
Kenora, and to be able to survey the
outcrop locations from the air, be-
fore picking the most likely one to
land beside. In this case we had only
the name of the lake to go by, and a
guess by a man who had heard that
it was in the north end of the lake.
But the sites we had picked from the
air were unrewarding and it was
many a weary mile that Peter and I
paddled, encouraged briefly by find-
ing one slight site on the north shore,
before we moved into the northeast
arm and finally sighted a huge, low
overhang on the west shore.

As we approached, the whole face
glowed with red colour and I knew
we had located Mclnnes' site. What
we saw was much as he had recorded
it. Only the "eagle" was missing from
his drawing, a puzzling feature, for if
it had been painted since his visit it

would reasonably have been in the
strongest colour on the face, and the
contrary was true. The answer seems
to be that Mclnnes ignored the forms
that were indistinct, and perhaps also
those that were puzzling to him. But
we must also remember that he was
there as a geologist, and that all kinds
of interruptions were possible to
make his record incomplete.

The serpentine form here we have
seen in various versions before, but
nowhere else in outline. The bird
form which I have guessed to be an
eagle looks rather more like a loon,
erect and stretching its wings on the
water. However, unlike Gertrude
Stein who wrote, "A rose is a rose is
a rose," the Indian would be more
likely to say, "A bird is a loon is an
eagle is a man is a manitou!"

A greater contrast in the mood of
Mameigwess Lake could scarcely be
imagined than the day already men-
tioned when we photographed it in a
driving rain, and the day of our
return. This time, as we approached

Dryberry Lake site

Mameigvvess Lake / ?

by borrowed kicker from our road's-
end stop at Camping Lake, the day
was hot and sultry and the water still
as glass.

We entered the east end of
Mameigwess Lake in an uncanny
stillness that was somehow enhanced
by the crystal clarity of the water,
where even at two paddle-lengths
depth we could see the sandy bottom,
and watch small schools of pickerel
swimming deep below.

When we looked closely at our
"bison" there could be no doubt
about its having been intended for a
moose. Thin lime deposits had all
but obliterated the identifying head
and bell. Yet it remained an intriguing
pictograph, surrounded as it seemed
by flying spears. And were the hind
legs drawn in two positions to convey
a sense of motion?

As it stands we cannot be sure
whether the second pair of legs
might not have been intended for
arrows. With the almost standard
lack of motion in animal renderings
on nearly every other site the former
is most unlikely.

What the psychologists call pro-
jection is a real problem in recording
these sites. For instance, on my brief
visit to the Jorgensens the previous
year they had mentioned a man with
a bow and arrow, and I was sure I
recognized one at the time. Yet on
my return neither Peter nor I could
find even a hint of one. The tempta-
tion is particularly strong in cases
like this where obscurity and over-
painting contrive to suggest all man-
ner of combinations.

A letter I had from R. H. Neeland
of St. Thomas, Ontario, has some

Tndian Lake

interesting comments to make on a
visit he made to the lake, then called
Rangatang, many years ago.

"Our guide, who knew the local
Indians, said that he had tried to get
some explanation of the pictures from
them, but had been told that they
had been on the rock face long before
their time. They were unable to give
any reason or explanation. They
added that there was a devil at the
foot of the cliff and they were not
going past unless absolutely neces-
sary."

The consensus of opinion among
the many Ojibwa I have interviewed
is that the Maymaygwayshi were
more to be avoided than feared. But
there seems to have been a special
fear associated with this site, having
something to do with a large recess
in the rock near the main group of
paintings. White residents say that a
Weyn-di-gow is believed to inhabit
this "cave." It is an interesting fact
that nowhere in the Shield country
have I found evidence of Indian use
being made of such caves as there
are. This contrasts with sites in the
Alberta foothills where I have re-
corded pictographs in two rock
shelters and had reports of others.

The paintings on nearby Indian
Lake offer no startling novelties. They
were likely painted from the ledge
they stand above, whereas the Ma-
meigwess site must have been
painted entirely from the water. There
is the suggestion of a fishtail on the
two Maymaygwayshi delineated,
which tallies with the belief of some
southern Ojibwa that the Rockmen
lived under the water.

The Turtle River sites, south of

Highway 17, both at the second
rapids below Bending Lake, one
above, the other below, were reported
to me by my fabulous Fort Frances
friend, Roscoe Richardson. The
paintings would be rather dull if it
were not for the handsome turtle.
Here a typical distortion adds a
grotesque touch — apparently a canoe
is emerging from the turtle's body.

The turtle, too, raises the interest-
ing question of whether the river got
its name from the painting, or the
painting its subject from the river's
name.

The Cuttle Lake sites are so close
to Rainy Lake that they might easily
have been included among the
border pictographs. When Art Golfer
dropped me off on his way from Fort
Frances to Nym Lake, Quetico Park,

Turtle River tortoise

early in my second summer in the
field, I already had some misgivings,
for though he had taxied along the
length of the only cliff on the lake I
had seen nothing, and I was going in
on the strength of veteran timber
cruiser Bill Bergman's memory of a
site he had noticed thirty or forty
years ago.

I paddled back and forth twice
along the shore before I noticed one
little group on an obscure face. Look-
ing for a place thereafter to make a
fire and heat a can of soup for lunch,
I happened to look up at the only
angle from which I could have spotted
them — a mass of iron stains on the
rock high above the water, normally
masked from view by a small stand

of trees. I scrambled up the fifteen
feet to the ledge, pushed through the
trees — and there was a beautiful
sight!

Up to this point every site had
been easily accessible from the water.
Here I had problems. First, how to
build a scaffold to reach the paintings
from the ledge, without an axe to cut
poles or rope to lash them. Second,
how to supply myself with water for
tracing with no container other than
a small soup tin!

Here were the first clear examples
of overlapping I had seen. Here, too,
was the first, and greatest, encroach-
ment of the slow-growing Rinodina
over an extrerriely strong pigment.
And here I learned that the pigment

Cuttle

Lake

detail

#27 *SX /,t>-

could be transparent; where the deer's
feet overlap the canoe beneath, only
the interposition of lime seepage in
the one case proves which came first
{see colour plate, page 61 ) .

Only a few of the symbols were
new: the forms that one might de-
scribe as inverted suns, and the most
curious little demi-human centaur-
like abstraction.

Two days earlier I had recorded
an equally rewarding site, on the
narrows south of Lower Manitou
Lake some twenty miles farther north.
This had been recorded by Mclnnes
some seventy years before and I have

Above: Minor site, Cuttle Lake
Below: Centaur-like abstract

Lower Manitou Narrows
(see also page 61 )

Mclnnes' drawing, 1890
72

reproduced his drawing on this page
for comparison with what I saw.

The central question raised is
whether Mclnnes omitted the strange
figure so conspicuously absent in his
drawing, or whether he lacked time
to put it in after recording what he
considered more important. The
square with the headless man is easily
identified, and the viewer will note
that there are only vague traces in my
drawing of the chain of figures
Mclnnes shows to the right.

Moving eastward, the next hinter-
land site is a most obscure one on
Lac des Mille Lacs. Almost vanished,
little can be seen except the remnants
of a crude little headless human
figure. But Fred Peters, a local resi-
dent with some Indian ancestry, had
a story to tell about its origin. When
a boy who had gone off with another
lad failed to return, his father went
to the conjurer whose business it was
to locate missing things, or persons,
through his use of the "shaking-tent."

"Well," said Fred "he [the con-
jurer] told what's happened. Those
boys is not dead they's living, but
you'll never see them again. A few
days after, this man was fishing and
then he seen the drawings on the
rock. So then he thought the boy was
in the rock there. They stole the
boys — Maymaygwayshiwuk did —
canoe and everything. And that,"
Fred concluded, "is pretty hard to
believe."

Only twenty miles southwest of
Fort William is one of the most indi-
vidual Shield sites on record. A short
winding stream from Oliver Lake
takes one into tiny Pictured Lake,
surely a mere century ago one of the

XjkJ^ Pictured

Lake samples

most out-of-the-way spots imaginable.
The theory that the pictographs were
associated with important canoe
routes breaks down on this example
completely.

Here, except for the Burntside
Lake example, is the only rock paint-
ing in the Shield where eyes and
mouth (or nose) are shown, on a
kind of dog face that is itself unique,
and is made more so by a tiny man
with outstretched hands faintly dis-
cernible between the ears. To the

right on the same face is a circular
figure, with feet but no head.

On Face II is the most remarkable
painting of a canoe I have yet re-
corded, illustrated below. If we
could trust proportions a dugout is
suggested. More important, the heads,
shoulders, and elongated torsos are
clearly delineated, as well as a bow
and stern paddle. On this same face
is the name "simo" and the same
vertical stroke between reversed
brackets that we noted on a Whitefish

Bay site. It is a moot question
whether the "simo" was painted by
a semi-literate coureur de bois living
with the local Indians, or an Indian
who had learned in his contact with
traders "or missionaries so to render
his own name. In any case the form
of the letters, for all the backward S,
is remarkably well executed.

Finally there are the serpent and
the finger-smears. Again we find eyes,
in the triangular head. Was our hypo-
thetical coureur de bois standing by
with suggestions, or did he perhaps
paint all these characters?

The Nipigon Country

At the mouth of the swift, deep
Nipigon, almost opposite the com-
munity of Red Rock, on the east
shore of the river where it is already
widening to enter Lake Superior is
the major pictograph site of the area.
Peter and I reached it by courtesy of
a Great Lakes Timber tug that
charged and hammered down the
bulky British Columbia boom logs,
churning through two acres of boun-

cing pulpwood to bring us and our
canoe to the boom-beleaguered shore.
Scrambling up a spiky deadfall we
reached the ledge from which the
pictographs were painted, a hard
stratum of the reddish sedimentary
rock that outcrops along this part of
the Lake Superior Shore.

Influenced, no doubt, by the
orderly arrangement of the rock
layers, the symbols appear in neat
succession along some fifty feet above
the ledge — extraordinarily like an
arithmetician's nightmare. The squat-
ting figure that was painted from the
shore below is surely a Maymay-
gwayshi; the more so as Lake Nipi-
gon Indians informed me of the old
belief in an underground channel that
led from underneath this figure
directly through to Lake Nipigon.
This accounted for the Maymay-
gwayshi being seen up in Gull Bay
with huge trout freshly caught in
Lake Superior!

Notable here, too, are two ex-
amples of the reversed brackets en-
closing a vertical bar. Another

Nipigon River Maymaygwaysh

example of this occurs far to the north
on Wunnumin Lake in a contem-
porary lichenoglyph of which George
Hamilton of Lands and Forests sent
me colour photographs.

The pin-pointing of four of the
Nipigon country sites I owe to Keith
Denis of Port Arthur, the indefatig-
able historian-bushman and conserva-
tionist whose canoe has been up-
ended over more portages north of
Superior than anyone else's I know
or have heard of. It was he who gave
me my first report of the Orient Bay

site, and confirmed the report, by
Mallery out of Mclnnes, of a site on
Echo Rock, on the northwestern
shore of vast Lake Nipigon. I am
indebted to him, too, for other sites
remaining to be visited in the hinter-
land west of Lake Nipigon, as well as
one on the Superior shore south of
Agawa in Mica Bay.

Site #33, only a mile south of what
was once the Prince of Wales' fishing
lodge on Orient Bay, was a real
puzzler. Beside a handful of what
were obviously Indian abstractions in

Echo Rock, Lake Nipigon

Kaiashk Bay

red were the faded outlines of a
square-tail trout, black along the
dorsal outline, white along the belly.
I recorded it with reservations, con-
fused by the naturalism of the colour
and proportions. In my report I
summarized it as "influenced" by
European standards. A year later,
through Keith Denis, I talked to the
artist's niece, who well remembered
the painting in its prime — a hand-
some rendition of the trout in full
colour, that had been retouched from
year to year. The artist had no Indian
blood, merely summered in the Bay
between 1912 and 1924. Since then
I have eyed any colour but the Indian
red with double suspicion!

In the summer of '59 through the
most welcome co-operation of the
District Forester at Geraldton, Peter
and I were passengers on the
spacious, diesel-powered Lands and
Forests work-boat whose beat was
Lake Nipigon. Heading northwest we
crossed the big lake to Gibraltar-like
Echo Rock, a great mass of granite
that pyramids up from the shore,
then drops sheer to the lake.

The pictographs are weathered al-
most to the disappearing point either
by ice action or by exfoliation. The
centre of interest, as well as the least
undecipherable, strongly suggested to
me an Indian's impression of a York
boat, with a mast amidship, a sug-
gestion of stays, and two plainly
visible crewmen. As the reader
probably knows, Lake Nipigon
Indians were in contact with the
French fur traders, notably Radisson
and Groseilliers, as early as the mid-
seventeenth century. The evidence is
startling at Gull Bay, where I talked
with heavily bearded blue-eyed men
whose native tongue was Ojibwa.

Just south of Gull (or Kaiashk)
Bay the shore is lined with three or
four miles of cliff averaging twenty
feet in height. Norman Esquega ran
us along this shore in his small fish-
boat to record three small sites, all
illustrated on these pages. Here again
I was on Mclnnes' trail. Yet he was
either in a hurry, just jotting down
sketches as he went, or he had not
developed the more careful renderings
of separate groups characteristic of
his Red Rock and Lower Manitou
and Dryberry drawings.

That the Echo Rock boat was in-
tended for a large one is evidenced

here, for in these two-man canoes
men with arms upraised in the
same manner are far larger in pro-
portion to the canoes than the crew
of the Echo Rock boat. It is just
possible that a widely travelled Nipi-
gon Indian, seeing — let us say — the
newly launched "Griffin" on Lake
Huron with its hairy-faced crew,
thought he was staring at a startling
new manifestation of the Maymay-
gwayshi. The strange thoughts that
passed through the mind of such a
man on such an encounter we can
never know; but like all men he would
rationalize what he saw in terms of
what he knew or believed.

A case might be made for the
theory that the coming of the hairy
European might have influenced the
aboriginal concept of the Maymay-
gwayshi. Along the borderlands west
of Superior these "rockmen" have
hairy faces, and again among the
Montagnais-Naskapi of northern Que-
bec. The northwestern Ojibwa speak
only of fleshless noses, and the Mani-
toba Cree of dwarfs. What spoils the
picture is Jenness's reference to the

belief of Parry Island Ojibwa in
a smooth-faced Maymaygwayshi —
though their bodies were thought of
as hairy.

The Northeast Superior Shore

The prevailing winds blowing
across the world's largest fresh-water
sea pile great waves by summer and

Kaiashk Bay examples

Courtesy, the Telegram, Toronto

ice masses by winter on the rocks
that line a rugged and little-travelled
shore. Yet this was the route of the
fur brigades a century and a half ago;
and the Puckasaw pits, recently ex-
cavated by Norman Emerson of the
University of Toronto, testify that
men lived on these shores thousands
of years ago. With the opening of
Highway 17 floods of the wilderness-
hungry are coming north, lighting
their fires where voyageurs and
Indians lit theirs two centuries or two
millennia ago.

Of five possible pictograph sites
along this shore only two have so far
been found and only that at Agawa
recorded.

Recording the Agawa site was the
dramatic climax of my second sum-
mer in the field. Four of us drove
north from Sault Ste Marie on a
Saturday morning in mid-September
to Mike Kezek's "spread" at the
mouth of the Montreal River: Gordon
Longley, Assistant District Forester,
Dave Carter, Sault Star feature writer,
his wife Ann, and I. In Mike's sturdy
lake cruiser we watched the Lake
Superior shore go by: the long
smooth curve of sand-edged Agawa
Bay — calm in an off-shore wind — the
cluster of rocky islands off the
promontory to the north behind which
Agawa Rock lay hidden, and to the
west the vast sweep of Superior,
broken only by the low mass of
Montreal Island.

At Agawa even in the calm the
water was restless beside the sloping
ledge under the sheer cliff and Mike
anchored his boat well away. We
commandeered a leaky punt from the
fish-camp on a nearby island, and

paddled ashore with one oar, a piece
of plank, and a bailing can. Then, as
my diary relates, "I stared. A huge
animal with crested back and horned
head. There was no mistaking him.
And there, a man on a horse — and
there four suns — and there, canoes.
I felt the shivers coursing my back
from nape to tail — the Schoolcraft
site! Inscription Rock! My fourteen
months' search was over."

Soon the ledge was alive with flash-
ing camera bulbs and busy feet. Gor-
don took charge of measurements,
Dave took roll after roll of film,
Ann carried things, while I plastered
pictograph after pictograph with rice-
paper and traced, traced. Offshore,
Mike anxiously watched the raa-
noeuvrings of Mishipizhiw in the
form of an ugly rock that loomed out
of the crystal depths uncomfortably
close to his anchorage swing.

We were shocked by the crude
initials splashed in black paint over
the central figure; only recently I
learned they were the work of a
fisherman's teen-age daughter. But
there were two consolations. She had
dated her "work" 1937, and already
the black was weathering into
oblivion, the Indian's red showing
through beneath.

We have yet to identify the Ching-
wauk who gave Schoolcraft the bark
drawings and interpretations of this
site. It might have been Shinguaconse,
widely known warrior in the 1812
campaign, but more likely Hatcher's
learned Indian, Shingvauk, "who un-
derstood pictography." If the latter,
we can more easily understand the
discrepancies between his memory
drawing and the original, especially

The Agawa site,

Lake Superior Provincial Park

"The fabulous night panther
and great serpent"

Does symbol to right of
horse signify a turtle?

where he added details missing in the
Agawa original.

We offer here for comparison what
seem to be the relevant pictographs
on the Agawa site and a reproduction
of Chingwauk's drawing.

Chingwauk spoke of a south-shore
shaman-warrior named Myeengun,
"who was skilled in the Meda [mi-
day]" and thus acquired the influence
and prestige that enabled him to
organize a war party "which crossed
Lake Superior in canoes. . . . The
results of the expedition [are painted]
on the face of a rock at Wazhenau-
bikiniguning Augawong . . . or In-
scription Rock, on the north shores
of Lake Superior, Canada. . . . The
passage was made in five canoes. . . .
The first was led by Kishkemunasee,
or the Kingfisher, ( 6 ) . . . . The cross-
ing occupied three days, depicted by
the figure of three suns under a sky
and a rainbow, (7). . . . Number 8
is the Mikenok, or land-tortoise . . .
which appears to imply . . . reaching
land. Number 9 is the horse. . . . The
Meda is depicted on his back crowned
with feathers and holding up his
drum-stick . . . used in magic rites.
Number 10 is the Migazee, or eagle,
the prime symbol of courage. In
Number 11 he records the aid he
received from the fabulous night
panther . . . and in Number 12 a like
service is rendered to the credit of
the great serpent."

There are several discrepancies that
space prevents me from discussing in

Symbols
at site
suggesting
"four days
over the
water"

Schoolcraft's
reproduction
of Chingwauk's
recollection
on birch bark
of the Agawa
pictographs

Detail of
canoe group:
upper canoe
is "led" by crane,
third canoe
by a flying bird

detail. However, Copway's brief in-
ventory interprets an upright arch —
often doubled — as "the sky," and the
inverted arch as "the water." It is not
too difficult to understand Ching-
wauk's unconscious conversion of
"four days over the water" to "three
days under the sky." Or perhaps in
Chingwauk's "book" the arch might
serve for either sky or water accord-
ing to the context.

Since the opening of Highway 17
north of the Soo the Lake Superior
Provincial Park staff has built an
access road and stairway so that the
public may reach and view the site
for themselves by land, at least on
calmer days when the rocks are dry.
Potential visitors are advised to take
time to look carefully; it is easy to
walk past some of these paintings
without noticing them: especially
when one has half his attention di-
verted by Lake Superior rollers lap-
ping at the ledge. "Santa Claus and
his reindeer" (as they were first re-
ported to me) are rather far along
and difficult to reach. The second
version of Mishipizhiw is on a ledge
that can be reached only by water.

I strongly doubt whether the deer
have any connection with Myeengun's
paintings. There is, indeed, a natural-
ism here that we must travel all the
way to Lac la Croix to duplicate. The
reclining deer, in my opinion, is the

Second version of
Mishipizhiw

masterpiece in this regard — a difficult
subject rendered almost delicately in
a clumsy medium. Whatever this
group may mean, the forms show a
real delight in the subject for its own
sake, and the style owes nothing to
other rock paintings. The peculiar
boat-like sleigh with one occupant
again has no parallel in other Shield
paintings.

The Agawa horse reproduced in
line on page 80 not only indicates
that Myeengun was a poor horseman,
but provides a major dating clue. It
is recorded that the first horse arrived
in Quebec in 1647, followed by four-
teen more in 1665, dubbed by the
Indians "moose of France." When
did the first military horses appear in
the Great Lakes region? Or had
Myeengun been to the plains?

But for the pictograph-hunter the
burning question is the location of
the south shore site. Schoolcraft
places it "on the banks of the Nama-
bin, or Carp River, about half a day's
march from its mouth." This fits the
Carp River in Porcupine Mountain
State Park, Michigan, where a seven-
mile long escarpment of a sort of
sandstone rears more than 200 feet
above the rough little river. Other

Carp rivers along the south shore
seem less promising.

The Eastern Hinterland

The country bordering the Great
Lakes is big and rough, and sites
tend to thin out. Inland the lakes
increase in frequency as the country
scales down; but not till we get into
the Gogama-Timagami areas do we
find the thick spattering of lakes so
characteristic of northwestern On-
tario.

In the northwest corner of this
hinterland, on the very edge of the
Shield, I recorded a modest site at
Terrier Lake. "A poor site . . . two
handprints, a possible human, a few
dots and lichen-spotted abstractions,"
my notes sum up.

Lumbering has been going on in

the region for many years, and a de-
pressing number of sites, notably
those at Manitowik, Horwood, and
Lady Evelyn lakes, have been
drowned out by lumber dams. For-
tunately one of the major sites is still
accessible, the Fairy Point picto-
graphs on Lake Missinaibi.

This was the site I had tried to
sketch from the canoe on a trip with
my wife. Seventeen years later I was
back for a more serious effort. Vince
Creighton, wild-life authority with a
strong urge for archaeology, was with
me, and Harry Tuvi, the local Lands
and Forests ranger.

The water was even rougher than
I had seen it on the previous visit.
According to my diary Tuvi drove us
close, "spattering spray and wallow-
ing in the deep troughs. As we neared
the cliffside it was obviously inhos-
pitable, but we went close and I
jumped on a wet, sloping rock with
the rope in hand. A jerk on the rope
from the boat — and it was let go, or
go in. So I was marooned for five
minutes till they could manoeuvre
the boat close enough for me to jump
back." Out on the railway years be-
fore they had warned Irene and me
of frequent drownings off Fairy Point,
of a big bull moose that had been
"sucked down" at the place. When a
brisk wind blows across the long
southwest arm, building up big waves
that bounce off the rock wall to make
an ugly cross-chop, the tales don't
sound so tall.

Faces VI and IX are illustrated
here. On the latter it is not difficult
to identify a caribou; the other
animals are more debatable. The in-
triguing creature with open mouth,

single, curved horn, and somewhat
reptilian body I would guess to be a
rendering of Mishipizhiw. On the
other face there is little that can be
understood.

Most of the symbols shown on
these facing pages are mystifying, too.
Is a feather head-dress indicated on
the human figure, or rays of power?
The little moose shows an attempt ( as
a sort of afterthought?) to render the
two farther legs. The white crosses
(not shown here) display the only
white pigment outside of the Namakan
site. On Face VIII there is a curious
little figure that reminds me of the
"centaur" on page 71. The figure
with the three tally marks at the top
suggests a horned man, but unfortu-
nately is too vague for any reliable
impressions.

I have already mentioned Jack
Ennis, the prospector with the stories
of Vikings on Lake Superior. I met
him on my first paddle in to Lake
Missinaibi, and it was he, on learning
that I was an artist, who suggested
that I look for the paintings on Fairy
Point. On a later occasion when we
had a few days together in a mining
camp east of Heron Bay, the subject
came up of the deep erosion fissures
in the rocks along the Superior shore.
It was then he told me of Indian tradi-
tions of having seen "red-haired men
in big canoes who used to paddle
right into the cracks in the rocks."

I suspect that the idea of red hair
came from Jack's urge to prove the
Viking stories. If one asks an Ojibwa
a leading question like "Did they have
red hair?", the answer is all too

Fairy Point, Face IV

likely to be a courteous affirmative,
and if the interviewer is obviously
naive an Indian will get some quiet
pleasure out of agreeing with any-
thing he comes out with. In any case
I have found that the Indians I have
interviewed are much less concerned
than I with such details; their verbal
descriptions, like the pictographs,
take it for granted that the audience
will do some filling-in on its own.

I have yet to find an Indian who is
not puzzled by the name of Lake
Missinaibi. The Ojibwa prefix "miss"
or "mish" means large or great, but
the last two syllables seem meaning-
less. It's a long shot, of course, but
my own theory is that "Missinaibi"
is an abbreviation ' of mu-zi-nu-
pay-hi-gun, a word Canon Sanderson
of Red Lake gave me as the best

Ojibwa for a painted pictograph. In
any case, so many things can happen
from the time the surveyor asks a
local Indian for the name of the lake
to the time when it appears in print
on a topographical map, that the
wonder is that so many are intelligible.

An example of how easily one
may jump to the wrong conclusion is
provided by the name of the nearby
railway station and Post Office, Mis-
sanabie. The assumption I made
twenty years ago that this was a
variant spelling of Missinaibi was cor-
rected by an old-timer who recalled
that the place was named after a Miss
Anabie, a popular construction-camp
nurse during the building of the rail-
way.

One would expect, in the vicinity
of such a large site as that on Fairy

Scotia Lake deta

Point, to find other smaller ones. In
nearby Little Missinaibi there are
three such sites; and Manitowik Lake,
where another site has been drowned
out, is only a short hop to the south-
east. However, flying over the country
from Chapleau, I could see very few
lakes where sites were even possible;
and in fact over the past three years
no further reports have come in.

The Little Missinaibi sites were re-
ported by W. T. (Bill) Hueston, then
District Forester at Chapleau, who
took a strong interest in them. My
diary refers to the scale map he sent
me "on which all three sites were
exactly pinpointed, so there was no

trouble but the wind, which made
Site #76 particularly wet to work on."

Site #74 was not too exciting. It
is interesting, though, to compare the
clumsy human figure on it with the
tiny Maymaygwayshi type on #75
underneath an enigmatic abstract
combination.

The triangle of hinterland enclosed
between White River, Sault Ste Marie,
and Sudbury is strangely empty of
pictograph sites, or even rumours of
such. My wife and I searched vainly
for a petroglyph site south of High
Falls near the Vermillia River on a
confusing series of rock ridges just
south of that river. Bill Hrinovitch,
who went with us, had seen it twice,
while hunting in the fall.

Farther east, in the very heart of
the eastern hinterland are the Ninth
Lake and Scotia Lake sites, which are
illustrated on the opposite page.

Ninth Lake, on the East Spanish
River is a short air-hoD east of
Biscotasing, for several years the
home of Archie Belaney, the fantastic
character who as a small boy in
England wanted to be an Indian when
he grew up — and did, as "Grey Owl."
One can still hear colourful stories
about him at Bisco where he made
his picturesque transition from white
trapper to "Indian."

The current water level at Ninth
Lake was so low that the tip of my
steel tape, when I stood in the canoe
stretching it up at arm's length barely
reached the upper limit of the picto-
graphs; and toeholds were too slim
for climbing. So I could only measure
and sketch the paintings, and had to
take my photographs from an oblique
angle. This is the site where, through

Little

Missinaibi

site

Comparison
of symbols

no one's fault in particular, I was
stranded alone for thirty-six hours,
with my canoe for a shelter, a tarp
for a bedroll, a small tin of soup for
meals, and — by luck — a small bottle
of instant coffee!

This site, and one on the Upper
French River that we have yet to
discuss, were both beautifully pin-
pointed for me by Al Supple, woods
inspector for K.V.P., a well-known
pulp and paper firm.

The Scotia Lake site was reported
as early as the fall of '57, but it was
three years later before Peter and I,
with Chuck Thompson at the con-
trols, flew in to Camp Friday, on
Lake Onaping, where we met our
correspondent, Stig Stromsholm. In-

terviewing an Indian woman who was
working for him, I asked her if she
knew anything about the Maymay-
gwayshi. "That's an animal that
comes out of the rock where the
pictures are," she told me.

The Ninth Lake site offers us a
neat little group of symbols: the sort
of formalized drawings — including
the thunderbird motif — that lead one
to suspect that they might have been
derived from quill work on moccasins
or baskets. It is interesting to com-
pare the upper right symbol with a
rather similar one on Painted Nar-
rows, and I have invented, to sharpen
the similarity, a possible transition
form. Yet one must be suspicious of
such theoretical ingenuities.

Ferris Lake pictographs

The Scotia Lake site is saved from
a certain monotony of rudimentary
forms — perhaps human — by the
rayed head. In Schoolcraft's inventory
we find a "warrior bold as the sun"
that is not dissimilar (p. 89) .

It was early in the summer of '59
that Irene, Peter, Christopher, and I
pitched our tent on the desolate shore
of Upper Grassy Lake, deep in the
Gogama forest. Here a disastrous fire
had left only a few gaunt, weather-
bleached pine sticks standing above
a tangle of deadfall and second
growth. A strong wind whipped up
the fine sand that once had been
covered with forest humus, till there
was sand on our bedrolls and even
between our teeth. Across the lake
lay an Indian's cabin, with the morn-
ing's wash flapping in the wind
against a background of scrub.

Peter and I put the canoe into the
water and found one little site; mostly
tally marks and finger-draggings, but
there was one little Maymaygway-
shi. We had hoped, driving in, to

borrow a Lands and Forests boat and
kicker at Ronda, but the only avail-
able one had just broken down. So
we decided to paddle in to Ferris
Lake, variously described as seven,
nine, and eleven miles away. It
turned out to be fifteen, following the
maddeningly tortuous curves of a
sluggish stream, or crossing swampy
lakes where shifting grass islands
made the map useless.

"At last," announces my diary,
"Ferris Lake, and down its length to
find the site. A most peculiar one:
little blocks of slaty schist with figures
and symbols — a horse (?) and a
dinosaur (!) and a human figure or
two. Fortunately I could work from
a ledge and recording went fast."

It was a weary crew that waved
to the aging Ojibwa couple outside
the lone cabin on Upper Grassy as
we paddled past their place in the
gathering darkness. Early the next
morning, when I went down to the
lake to wash, there was Thomas
Nephew, our neighbour, wearing the

Diamond
Lake site

friendliest of smiles. I had one more
site to record on this lake, and asked
him to go along.

"It was a joy to have an Indian in
the bow — an unusually good canoe-
man, even for an Indian. And I was
lucky to have him along, for most of
the site was exposed to the waves and
we had a wild time taking tracings
and measurements. When I ran out
of film it was too wet and rough to
try reloading. So, back to camp —
Nephew's sixty-nine-year-old strokes
as powerful as a young man's, in a
quick rhythm that tired me. . . . Talk-
ing to Nephew I learned that he por-
tages seven miles and paddles twenty
to Gogama for Church services.
He has lost all knowledge of Ojibwa
beliefs, apparently . . . knew nothing
of the Maymaygwayshi."

Until I succeed in pin-pointing a
rumoured site on Lake Abitibi the
Gogama cluster will remain the closest

to the Quebec boundary. Inside Que-
bec, near Lake Kippawa, I have a
reliable report of petroglyphs. Farther
east, in the upper watershed of the
St. Maurice River, Jacques Beland
has reported a number of rock paint-
ings. Doubtless, the Shield woodlands
of that province contain many more.

A definite report, via Macfie and
others, of a site at Diamond Lake
took us in to Lake Timagami a few
days before we did the Gogama sites.
Peter and I flew in to Bear Island
where we interviewed eighty-year-old
George Turner, son of the former
Hudson's Bay Company factor, one
of the most knowledgeable men in the
area, though only part Indian.

Confirming the Diamond Lake site,
he also pin-pointed three sites on
Lake Timagami itself. Our Beaver
dropped us off at Diamond Lake just
long enough to do a job on it. The
rock here was a fine-textured off-
white quartzite, an ideal background
for the pictographs. Lake Diamond
had been flooded, too, judging by the
one group that was largely underwater.

A clumsy heron, the vestiges of a
possible Maymaygwayshi, and a num-
ber of stick figures appear on this
site. The circle with centre marked
we have already seen at Cuttle Lake.
Both Schoolcraft and Copway in-
clude it in their inventories: the
former as "a symbol of time," the
latter as "spirit!"

Site #80,

east of Elliott Island,
Upper French River

George Turner's Bear Island site
revealed only a barely discernible
triangle and a few tally marks. He
took us in his boat to another island
site; but all we found was where it
had been. The rocks that bore the
paintings were gone. Thence we
headed into the northwest arm of
Timagami for one of the surprises of
the summer.

I was puzzled when we turned in
and landed at a nice camp site on
the west shore; even more so when
George climbed out, walked to a little
cedar that grew close to the water's
edge, got down on his hands and
knees . and peered through the
branches. In a moment he turned
back to us a grinning face, and
beckoned. Thrusting my own face
through the branches at water level,
with one elbow in the water, I saw
the Indian painting — on a little rock
plane of a small boulder!

vertical
cross -sec f /on/?,
of- doaicfer^
Through
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pictoyraphr™

£><2xirock

Voyageur Highway: East

On the voyageur route along the
north shores of Lake Superior and
Huron and up the French River to
Lake Nipissing one would expect to
find a fair number of sites. To date
I have recorded five, found another
at Mica Bay that Keith Denis tracked
down for me, and have got wind of
two more.

Both the Killarney Bay site on
Georgian Bay, and the Mica Bay one
south of Agawa have a unique feature
in common: the use of yellow and
black along with the usual red. At
both sites some symbols have a non-
Indian look, especially those where
black is involved. At Killarney white
pigment has been mixed with both
yellow and black.

The most tempting theory is to sup-
pose that the voyageurs — especially
those with Indian blood and beliefs
— tried their hand at rock painting.
Lumbermen may have, too; for at
Willisville, just inland from Georgian
Bay, there are tar paintings, clearly
non-Indian, on Alligator Rock.

The Collins Bay site is in the con-
ventional red again, on the rock-lined
inner passage that the voyageurs used
when Georgian Bay got too rough
for comfort. Here is an animal head

Northwest arm,
Lake Timagami

as bodiless as that on the Quetico
Lake site. Here again is our ubiquit-
ous— though somewhat battered —
thunderbird, and tally marks, I should
judge, rather than the alternative
canoe.

Farther east, I had no success in
finding "an astonishing serpent" re-
ferred to in Harmon's Journal, pre-
sumed to be in the vicinity of
Grondines Point. In '59 I flew over
the area, a complex labyrinth of small
islands and shoals, all seeming to
shelve gently into the water.

Eastward, the voyageurs ascended
the French River to Lake Nipissing,
crossed that lake, and portaged into
the Ottawa watershed. In all that
distance, so far, I have recorded only

three sites and have yet to receive
definite reports of any others. Site
#33, just above Recollet Falls, faintly
displays a small human figure and
one other vague mark. Sites #8 1 and
#82 were recorded through the hos-
pitality— and original report — of John
and Bill Kennedy. Both sites are at
the upper end of the French River,
not far west of Franks Bay on Lake
Nipissing. The paintings on "Gibral-
tar," as it is called locally, are badly
weathered, and little can be de-
ciphered but a few canoes. Site #80,
a bare half mile west of Keystone
Lodge, is in clear, strong pigment.
Only the thunderbird, turned on its
side, is somewhat obscured by lichen.
The stick figures remind us of those

Site near
Killarney
Bay

life

at Diamond and Scotia Lakes. Among
the others are a canoe, a pig-like
bear, and a likely fish.

Southeast Ontario

Southward from Lake Nipissing
the Shield formation reaches as far
as the Severn River to the west, the
Kawartha Lakes in the centre, and
to the east breaks through the St.
Lawrence Lowlands to form the
Thousand Isles. In all this area only
three pictograph sites have been re-
corded: one group of petroglyphs
north of Stony Lake by Sweetman in
1955, and two rock painting sites,
fifty miles east, on Lake Mazinaw. A
survey of the lakes in this region
would probably reveal an unsuspected
proportion of raised water levels from
lumbering operations that go back in
some districts a full century and
more. Lingering reports of rock paint-
ings in the Muskoka-Parry Sound

area so far have been impossible to
localize. The one clear report I have
is of paintings on a rock on the north
shore of Lake Simcoe that broke off
and fell into the water in 1914.

The Bon Echo site on Lake Mazi-
naw, however, amply compensates at
least in extent for other sites that
may have vanished in the area. The
air view on the opposite page shows
the koo-chi-ching, or "Little-lake-at-
the-end-of-a-big-lake" of Lake Mazi-
naw, and the southern end of the
main lake. The sandy spit we see is a
part of the Bon Echo property, for-
merly owned by Merrill Dennison,
now a Provincial Park. The huge
granite escarprnent on which the
paintings appear is visible on the
right, averaging 100 feet in height for
a full mile. In numbers of paintings
as well as for sheer bulk Bon Echo
has no rival in Ontario. In June of
'58 I recorded a hundred and thirty-

Lake Mazinaw
"Rabbit-man"

Courtesy, Ontario Department of Lands and Forests

five symbols, scattered over twenty-
seven faces.

Site #38, on Little Mazinaw,
roughly a mile and a half south of the
main site, has three faces.

The following pages illustrate only
about a fifth of the actual paintings
on the site, all easily accessible by
canoe. Of those omitted many are
either so weathered or so repetitive
that the viewer would find them of
minor interest. Handprints are en-
tirely absent, canoes are rare, and
the tendencies toward geometric types

of abstractions so marked that we are
tempted to ask whether the paintings
are not the product of a culture quite
distinct from those farther west. They
seem older, too, in so far as a large
number have been weathered to near-
disappearance. There can be no
reasonable doubt that the lake's
present name (variously spelled in
early references as "Massanog,"
"Massinaw," etc.) is from the Algon-
kian word for "picture," "writing,"
"painting," "book" (mu-zi-nu-hi-
gun).

The colour reproduction on the
opposite page is from Face II, the
second most northerly, one of the
strongest in colour, and as mystifying
as any. The weird central figure is
surely no native animal, although the
shoulder-neck area is too badly
weathered for the viewer to be able
to make out the original outline. The
strong suggestion of cloven hoofs is
unique. Note the small animal be-
neath this one's belly — not identi-
fiable either, but far more typical of
the other animals on the site.

Even the canoe, if we so interpret
the lower part of the painting, is

strikingly different from others else-
where. Are the diagonal strokes in-
tended for arms, or paddles, or
something else? And what about the
strange little animal to the lower left
(related perhaps to the large one),
for dorsal spines are quite clear along
its back, appearing also on the intact
portion of the larger animal's back?

Below, by way of contrast, is a
colour reproduction of the bison at
Site # 99, on Lake of the Woods at
the opposite end of the province.

When it comes to the human
renderings above, we are again at a
loss. Are these a hare's ears on this

Lake
Mazinaw

strange small figure? Or large
feathers? If it is Ojibwa in origin we
could make out a case for its repre-
senting Nanabozho, legendary hero
and "demi-god," traditionally a hare.
Among the northwestern Ojibwa he
changes his name to Wey-zuh-kay-
chahk, the Canada jay, or "Whiskey-
jack."

Are other rabbit ears emerging
from the "tectiform" to the left? This
strangely structured form, unique to
the Mazinaw site, appears again on
two other faces.

Other figures on this page are not
unlike some we have seen farther
west. One is reminiscent of the
mysterious Route Lake pair illus-
trated on page 65. The tiny figures at
the bottom of the page suggest two
"bird-men" in a canoe, and a turtle.

At the top left of the opposite page
we have an abstraction which we are
also tempted to relate to the "rabbit-
man" already viewed. The face illus-
trated below it was most frustrating
to record, much of it being too faint
to trace directly. The rendering here
suggests dorsal spines and a horned
head, but these should be regarded

with some suspicion; I may well here
have succumbed to my own wishful
thinking. The more familiar forms
below call for little comment, but
those in the bottom margin are
strange indeed. The one might have
been influenced by a pottery design;
the other might be described as "geo-
metricized tree branches" for lack of
a better guess.

On the next page are still further
examples of relatively complex ab-
stractions so typical of this site.
Along with this tendency is an equally
marked absence of any urge to
naturalism, a trend that seems to
grow in strength as one moves west.
Recall that here we are on the
southern periphery of the Shield for-
mation and this is not too surprising.
In historical times this was the border
country between the nomadic Algon-
kian hunters of the Shield woodlands
and the corn-raising Iroquoians of
the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes low-
lands. Regardless of the ebb and flow
of prehistoric cultures, geography

Site #37, Face XXVIIIa

Little Mazinaw Lake, Face III

would "always have exerted a border-
land influence here.

Beyond its geographical situation
the Mazinaw setting itself must have
exerted a powerful spell on any
human group to whom it was familiar.
The awe and disquietude associated
with far less impressive sites in the
north and west is clearly indicated by
the lingering mythological associa-
tions. How much more would the
Mazinaw setting have stimulated such
responses!

For Christopher, Irene, and me it
was a sobering experience merely to
paddle along the base of this cliff,
sensing the depth of the water be-
neath and the height of the rock
above, where occasionally jutting
crags eighty or ninety feet overhead
seemed ready to plunge down on us
— and undoubtedly would fall some
day. One afternoon we were more
than a little startled to see the water

nearby begin an inexplicable whirling
motion, accelerating till it lifted sud-
denly into a miniature waterspout,
then vanishing as quickly as it had
appeared. A trick of the air currents,
no doubt, with thermals playing
around the cliff on a hot summer day;
but uncanny for all that.

Site #38 is only a mile south of the
main Mazinaw site, with only three
small faces, one of which is illustrated
here. There surely were others in
neighbouring lakes; but it is a century
or more since lumbering operations
began, and it is altogether likely that
dams have drowned out the others. I
have had only one report of another
site in the region — in the Gananoque
Lakes area.

This completes the roster of Shield
sites so far recorded and the reader
will be ready to view them from the
broader perspective of Kenneth Kidd
in the final pages of our story.

Site #37,
Face XXIV

Anthropological
Background

KENNETH E. KIDD

Mclnnes,
1894

A nation's resources include many things. When one thinks of them, one
is most likely to think first of all of agricultural, mineral, and forest resources,
for these are primary; and then, secondly, of manufacturing and industrial
potential. There is, however, besides these a multitude of assets which go to
make up the total heritage, and among them one may well count anthropo-
logical and historical legacies. Part of the Canadian heritage is the complex
of Indian rock paintings left by generations of woodland dwellers who
inhabited the country before the white man arrived on its shores, and for
some time thereafter.

It is indeed true that rock paintings are not limited to Ontario, to Canada,
nor even to North America. The cave paintings pf France and Spain
and certain other parts of Europe have been known for many years,
while those of Tassili in the Sahara desert have recently been discovered,
studied, and admirably described by Henri Lhote. In Siberia, numerous sites
have been found and described by the Russian archaeologist, Okladnikov.
The South African rock paintings, many of them studied by the late Abbe
Breuil, are justly famous, and each year adds fresh discoveries to their already
large number. There is indeed no continent, and but few countries, which
cannot claim to have some examples of this type of record from its past. In
North America, the distribution of rock paintings is very great; in fact, few
large areas which were suitable for making them were overlooked or neglected.

The first mention of these American paintings which has come to the
present writer's attention appeared in the English periodical Archaeologia
in 1781; generally speaking, they attracted little attention, however, either on
the part of the antiquarians of the day, or of the many travellers who had the
opportunity of seeing them. The first systematic attempt to record rock paint-
ings on this continent was undertaken by Colonel Garrick Mallery in the
United States. His eight-hundred-page report to the Secretary of the Smith-
sonian Institution, under the aegis of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and
containing the results of his investigations from 1876 to 1893, forms the
bulk of that Bureau's tenth annual report. Using the term "pictograph" as a
generic designation to cover "picture-writing" in every sort of medium —
bark, wood, bone, rock, copper, hide, and so on; whether painted, smeared,
carved, scratched, pecked, or pounded — he made an invaluable record, exten-
sively illustrated, of the examples of which he knew personally or by report.

Though Mallery concentrated upon sites within the borders of the United
States, he included what he had learned about other sites in the Americas,
and even beyond, but the only Canadian rock pictures actually illustrated in

102

his report were carvings on the shores of Fairy Lake in Nova Scotia. As for
other records of Canadian occurrences, a thorough search of the literature
has not yet been made. But it is known that even before the turn of the
century, some sites here and there across Canada had been noted; rock
carvings and rock paintings had both been recorded in the far west before
1900. In Ontario, two men particularly were alert to and recorded graphically
the occurrence of rock paintings. One of these, David Boyle, the first director
of the Provincial Museum, recorded rock paintings at the large site at Bon
Echo Lake, as well as those at two smaller sites north of Lake Timagami, on
Diamond and Lady Evelyn Lakes. The other man, a geologist named Mclnnes,
made sketches of such sites as he found while examining rock outcroppings
on the shores of the Shield country lakes and rivers, during the course of
work done in northwestern Ontario for the Geological Survey. Neither man
was an artist, and each had to sketch under the exigencies of other work; yet
despite some inaccuracies, their records are invaluable.

The idea from which the present survey stems had its beginnings in 1946,
when Mr. A. E. Kundert, of Madison, Wisconsin, sent to the Royal Ontario
Museum a small number of colour photo transparencies, showing rock paint-
ings he had seen on Lake Mameigwess in the Lakehead area of Ontario. In
one of them could be seen an animal which appeared to have a hump on its
back, suggesting a bison. Bison in such heavily wooded, lake country would
be an interesting phenomenon indeed and the matter aroused the writer's
curiosity. This information was followed up by inquiries addressed to two
well-known students of the history and lore of the Lakehead area to see what
further evidence of rock paintings might be on record locally. Mr. Sigurd

Drawing
by

David
Boyle
of detail
on Face X
{see page 94)

103

Olson, the prominent naturalist, author, and conservationist, and Dr. Grace
Lee Nute of the Minnesota Historical Society both replied that they knew of
such occurrences at Hegman Lake, Minnesota. Professor Robert C. Dailey
of the Department of Anthropology in the University of Toronto noted
several occurrences during field work in Quetico Park.

The matter lay fallow for several years, and it was not until the Quetico
Foundation enabled the writer to make a trip through Quetico Park for quite
a different purpose that it was revived. On that trip, the writer was able to
see for himself the splendid paintings of moose on the rocky ledges of Irving
Island in Lac la Croix, which convinced him that they were worthy of record-
ing. In 1957 the project got started. In that year, the Quetico Foundation
kindly provided necessary funds to carry through the work for one summer,
if a suitable recorder could be found and if the Royal Ontario Museum were
agreeable to supervising it. This the Museum was happy to do, and chose
Mr. Selwyn Dewdney to carry out the field work. He was an excellent choice,
both because of his training in art and because of his experience in and
knowledge of the woodland country where he would have to work. He had
canoed extensively through it in his youth, knew and understood how to face
its problems, and had a sympathetic attitude towards the native inhabitants.
Thus the project was launched.

The Wilderness Research Center at Basswood Lake, Minnesota, was also
interested in the project, and in each succeeding year has generously lent its
support. The Ontario Department of Lands and Forests assisted in many
ways, and it is safe to say that, without its help, much of the work could not

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have been accomplished. Its personnel passed on information which came to
them concerning the location of sites, and in numerous other ways its
facilities aided in the recording programme. To all of these agencies, and to
the many individuals who helped along the way, a debt of great gratitude is
due, not only for direct aid, but also for encouragement and incidental sup-
port. Finally, the Royal Ontario Museum has happily been able to give
increasing support to the recording project. It is the repository for the repro-
ductions made by Mr. Dewdney, where students will have access to them for
study, so far as is consistent with their good preservation.

Care has been taken to make the Museum's records as comprehensive and
detailed as possible. Black and white line drawings to the scale of one inch
to the foot show the disposition of all discernible paintings on each face of a
given site, the elevation of the paintings above the water on the date of
recording, the special features of the site (lichen growth, cracks, etc.), and
the exact geographical location. Colour transparencies on file for the great
majority of the sites record the landscape setting, relative variations in colour,
and in many cases detailed close-ups (up to .5 metres) recording lichen
growth, lime precipitates, flaking, and pigmentation. In addition Dewdney
has executed full-size water colour copies of all the more significant and
representative pictographs, many of which are reproduced in this book as
half-tone photo-engravings. Finally, notes on the sites themselves, ethnological
material related to the sites, and records of interviews with contemporary
Indians are also on file, providing a wealth of supplemental data for future
study. This information is available to responsible researchers.

It was possible to include only a part of this material in the present publica-
tion, but every effort has been made to cover it in as thorough and representa-
tive a way as the limits of space would allow. Actually there is at least a brief
reference to every recorded site, and only a half dozen of the minor sites are
left unrepresented in the illustrations.

In Ontario, rock paintings occur in the country covered by the Canadian
Shield. Outside of that area, there appear to be few outcroppings which were
attractive for the purpose. The Shield extends in a vast horseshoe around
Hudson Bay, swinging south to the northern shores of the Great Lakes, then
northward, curving both into the Labrador peninsula and into the regions
west of the Bay. Rock paintings have been found and recorded along its
extreme southern border at Bon Echo Lake in Hastings County, along the
French River, at Espanola, Agawa Bay, and Lake Nipigon. They have also
been located at many points in Quetico Park and along the Rainy River
drainage. North of the above places, they have been found at many spots
deep in the Shield area, such as Lake Missinaibi, Vermilion River, Lake
Mameigwess, Route Lake, Lake Timagami, Diamond Lake, Ferris Lake,
Deer Lake, and White Dog Portage. On the United States side of the border,
and still on the Shield, or on its fringes, sites have been located at Hegman
Lake, and on the Kawishiwi River in Minnesota, and in the Fayette Peninsula
in Lake Michigan. The most prolific areas have been those along the Rainy

105

Opposite :

sample page from
ie Museum
rawings,

"rooked Lake site

River and Lake of the Woods, but this may be due to more intensive study
and to the fact that it is much more of a thoroughfare and therefore better
known. Quite possibly, some districts now sparsely represented in the collec-
tion of reproductions may yet yield equally abundant results. North of points
where the Shield ceases to show, no rock paintings occur; this area includes
much of Ontario immediately south of James Bay and Hudson Bay.

The Canadian Shield country is a land of rocks, rivers, and lakes, with
perhaps somewhat more water than land. The elevation is generally not great,
although in some points it rises to as much as 4000 feet above sea level.
Rapids and waterfalls are often impediments to navigation. The land is
covered with a dense growth of mixed coniferous and deciduous forests, con-
sisting of spruce, tamarack, jack pine, birch, and poplar. Except in the
southernmost reaches, along the Rainy River drainage, and in the districts of

106

Parry Sound, Muskoka, Nipissing, and southward, no hardwoods are present.
The forest is inhabited by numerous species of animals, notably the beaver,
otter, mink, fisher, foxes, wolves, black bears, and rabbits. Moose are now
common, elk are absent, and caribou present only in small herds in parts of
the area. Wildfowl are abundant in season, particularly ducks, geese, loons,
and others which habitually continue northward for the breeding season. The
streams and lakes abound in fish of many species. Snakes, though found
occasionally, are not very abundant; they are the cause of much comment
when seen.

To its Indian inhabitants, the region must have been both a paradise and
a severe challenge. Despite the dense forests, one could travel almost any-
where by water, using canoes in the summer and snowshoes and toboggans
in the winter when the lakes and rivers were frozen. Food was usually reason-
ably abundant in the form of fish and game and berries, but at times it was
hard to find, and hunger was the consequence for the unlucky hunter and his
dependents. Materials for wigwams and tipis were everywhere, in the form
of birch bark and poles, but they were impermanent. The skins of animals to
be used as lodge coverings were harder to come by, but could usually be had
for the effort; they were likewise sought for winter clothing. Winters were
often bitterly cold and the snows deep; summers were hot, and accompanied
by clouds of mosquitoes and other biting insects which made life miserable
for all human inhabitants. Agriculture under aboriginal conditions was im-
practicable. Hunting and fishing were thus the only available means of
subsistence in most areas (apart from a little berry-picking), and the former
was subject to those cyclic variations in the game supply which periodically
imposed severe hardships upon the inhabitants. In those parts of the Shield
country where they could be had, the Indians were more fortunate in having
the additional support of wild rice and maple sugar to help them through the
lean months.

This land of shining waters and gloomy forest was the general environment
in which the painters of the rock pictures were born, lived their lives, and went
finally to their happy hunting ground. It was by turn benign and cruel,
beautiful and harsh, ample and niggardly, but always inscrutable. To the
Indian's mind, there must have been forces at work whose nature he could
but dimly surmise, and it was therefore to him the part of wisdom to try to
keep in their favour. Alternatively, some of these forces could be harnessed,
so to speak, to cause injury or death to others, or by suitable rituals cajoled
into assuming a friendly attitude to the supplicant. The world was to these
people composed not only of the tangible and the visible but also of much
which was invisible and immaterial.

The archaeological history of the country north of the Great Lakes is only
beginning to be understood, but numerous students are interested in its pre-
history. Mr. Thomas E. Lee, formerly of the National Museum of Canada,
and Dr. Emerson F. Greenman, of the University of Michigan, have shown
that there were human occupants at the edge of the ice sheets as they re-

107

treated northward some 8,000 to 9,000 years ago, and that later inhabitants
made and used pottery. Long before pottery-making became known, how-
ever, there was a group, at least along the more southern reaches of the area,
who made extensive use of copper for tools and implements; they are known
to us as the Old Copper Culture people, and are believed to have endured
from 5000 B.C. to 1500 b.c. Sites of this culture have been found in numerous
places in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and at Reflection Bay, Lake Nipigon, and
elsewhere in Ontario. Later cultures were the Early Woodland, which seems
to have come to an end between 500 b.c. and 100 B.C.; it was characterized
by burial mounds, pottery, and possibly the use of tobacco and the pipe; and
the Middle Woodland and Late Woodland cultures which succeeded it. There
is much yet to be learned about these, as well as about the earlier cultures,
and several students are engaged in the task or have already contributed to it.
Dr. R. S. MacNeish of the National Museum of Canada, Dr. Norman Emerson
and Dr. Robert C. Dailey of the University of Toronto, Dr. George I. Quimby
of the Chicago Natural History Museum, and Walter A. Kenyon of the Royal
Ontario Museum are some of the investigators of the numerous problems
which still remain before the prehistory of the Shield country will become clear.
(For further reading, consult: Quimby, Indian Life in the Upper Great Lakes;
MacNeish, Introduction to the Archaeology of Southeast Manitoba.)

The break between the archaeological and the ethnological cultures came
of course with the arrival on the scene of the first white men. None of the
explorers mention, so far as this writer is aware, the presence of pottery
among the Indians whom they met in the Shield country, but in most other
respects the Indians seem to have been living much as they had been doing for a
long time. Perhaps pottery was only used in places where it was convenient
to do so, although this does not seem to have been the case in prehistoric
times. In any event, the historic Indians were all Algonkian-speaking, with
the possible exception that there may have been some Siouan-speaking groups
west of Lake Superior, and all may be classed in the ethnographic group of

The Grassy Narrows scroll

Eastern Woodlands people. Precisely where the various Indian groups were
living when the country was first visited by white men it is now impossible to say
with assurance, but it would appear that the Ottawas and the Nipissings were
living east of Georgian Bay and perhaps northward, while the Ojibwa occupied
virtually all the remainder of the Ontario portion of the Shield as well as
the southern shores of Lake Superior. The Cree lived on parts of the Shield
in Quebec, Manitoba, and westward, but probably never held any parts of it
in Ontario. It is known that during the historic period there have been various
movements of peoples, probably not of great significance so far as rock
paintings are concerned, but deserving of note. The Ottawa, after much
wandering, finally came to settle chiefly on Manitoulin Island, while the
Ojibwa moved into the territory lately vacated by them. The Ojibwa also
moved into the southern peninsula of Ontario, which had once been the
homeland of the Huron and their kin, and have occupied those portions of
the Shield which lie in that part of the Province, as well as some other areas.
At the time when this expansion was taking place, a branch of the Ojibwa,
living near the falls of St. Mary's River, and for that reason known to the
French as the Saulteurs (or Saulteaux), began to push westward over large
portions of the present districts of Kenora and Rainy River and even further
west. The cultural differences among these groups, however, is slight. One of
the most interesting aspects of their life, from the point of view of the present
discussion, is the existence among the Ojibwa of the secret society called the
Grand Medicine Society or Midaywiwin. This organization was extremely
important in Ojibwa life, and most men strove to become members of it at
some time during their lifetime. Those who became leaders or Miday were
thought to possess great supernatural power; they had long rituals to remem-
ber, and to help them to do so they frequently recorded them upon rolls of
birchbark. Pictures of birds, animals, and men were scratched into the inner
surface of the bark to serve as a reminder of the various stages in the
ceremony and of the sequence of songs. It was also rather common for the

(see page 13)

men to scratch symbols of their clans upon their war clubs, pipe stems, and
other personal belongings, and the same symbols were sometimes incised
upon their grave markers.

From what has already been said, it is clear that the Indian occupation of
the Canadian Shield country goes a long way back in time, and that there has
been a succession of peoples living in it. That there was change and move-
ments of groups is certain. The rock paintings could, at least in theory, be
due in whole or in part to any one of them. In practice, it seems impossible
that any of the paintings could have withstood the severe weathering to which
they would have been subjected during the time-span covered by the period
of human occupation. To this writer, it seems improbable that they could
have lasted even since Early Woodland times. If this reasoning holds, those
now in existence are most likely the work of a people of Woodland culture,
probably the Late Woodland of prehistoric and Eastern Woodland of early
historic times.

The rock paintings in Ontario are drawings of various sorts usually made
on the smooth surface of granite or similar rock outcroppings along the
shores of lakes and rivers. Vertical or nearly vertical faces presented the
most desirable situations, but this could be affected by the presence of lichens,
fissures, and so on. Not all smooth rock faces were utilized, nor were all those
near streams and lakes; the choice was seemingly capricious but may have
depended upon factors at which we can only guess. Even today, miscellaneous
little objects seemingly purposely left by Indians at the sites of some rock
paintings suggest the idea of offerings to spirits of the place; if this is so, an
idea that the place was the abode of spirits may have been one of the con-
trolling factors in the choice of sites. As for lichen-covered rocks, it would
seem natural that the Indians would avoid them as locations for their rock
paintings, but other considerations may have dictated otherwise. (Lichens
have probably destroyed many rock paintings, but how extensive such damage
may be it would be impossible to determine. Studies are being made on the
growth of lichen, and on other matters connected with them, which may throw
some light on the problem. )

It is conceivable that there is some pattern or plan to the general location
of rock paintings, but, if this is true, it has still to be worked out. Were they
placed only at the abodes of spirits? Were they scattered haphazardly in
remote as well as in accessible places? Were they located only along important
routes, or along routes used only at certain seasons or for certain purposes?
The answers to these, and to many other questions, still have to be found,
but should be interesting when discovered.

If a naturally smooth rock face was always chosen, it would not be neces-
sary for the artist to prepare it for painting in any way. He would, however,
need to select a face which he could reach from a canoe or at least from the
ice; that is, an almost sheer cliff rising from the water. Failing such a site, he
could and often did choose a face which, though well above the water level,

110

could still be reached from a ledge. Only a very few rock paintings exist in
Ontario where the means of access is not now apparent. Having selected the
location, and presumably made whatever religious observances may have
been necessary, the Indian painter still needed to make ready his pigments.
This was seldom an arduous task, for the Indians were well aware of innumer-
able sources of pigment and were entirely familiar with their preparation and
uses. They employed them extensively in early historic times and almost
certainly in prehistoric times as well to paint designs upon their faces, arms,
and bodies, and sometimes upon their belongings. Moreover, the pigments
used in rock paintings — namely, the two oxides of iron — were abundant in
the area, and it was only necessary to gather them and crush them to a powder.
A white pigment, whose composition is uncertain, was occasionally used in
the rock paintings; it may have been guano, or a white earth. The iron oxides,
when mixed with some binder, were ready for use. Although preliminary tests
have been made to determine the nature of this binder, it remains unknown.
More complicated tests may reveal its identity. At any rate, good binders
were certainly available to the Indians, and beyond a doubt they used one or
more of them, and possibly all. Gulls' eggs would serve admirably and bears'
grease would likewise suffice. Beaver tails and fish roe, the hoofs of moose
and deer, could all be boiled to make glue, and fish and rabbit skins may
have been utilized also. Any one of these, mixed with red ochre or white
earth, would adhere well to the rock. From the examination so far made, it
appears that the binder leaches out in time, leaving the pigment firmly
attached to the microscopic indentations and convexities of the rock surface.
The oxide pigments were of two colours, red and yellow; but since they were
seldom pure, all gradations between these may be found in the paintings. The
colours were in some cases applied with the ringers, as Dewdney has pointed
out on p. 17, but it seems likely that brushes, probably made by breaking
back the fibres of small plants like the willow would frequently serve as well.
Whether brushes made of moose or deer hair were used is problematical,
though they could readily have been made. With such simple equipment —
mineral pigments, grease or glue, fingers or a simple brush, and a canoe to
stand in when the work was done in the summer — the great panoply of Shield
country rock paintings must have been done.

The rock paintings still in existence mirror indirectly some aspects of their
makers' attitudes to their external world and something of their thinking.
They portray certain of their game animals, such as moose and bear; and the
canoes and wigwams shown illustrate the world of their own creation. Over
and above these aspects, the paintings also illustrate some of the creatures of
the native's mind, in the shape of mythical or supernatural beings like the
thunderbird, the serpent, the turtle, and the pipe-smoking moose. All of the
pictures were presumably placed on the rocks for some purpose, the most
obvious being to convey a message. If they were intended as messages, some
were probably addressed to the attention of other Indians; some to the

111

inhabitants of the spirit world. Any which were not, strictly speaking, messages
may have been memorials of one sort or another, illustrations of myths, or
markers of spots of some ritual or other significance. These are but sugges-
tions of the purposes which may have motivated the placing of the rock
paintings where they are found today.

As Dewdney has made clear, they have already yielded much information
upon such matters as technique and art styles, and shown that some of the
sites were used more than once. There is still much that is not understood,
however, and the remaining questions pose a challenge to further study. We
should like to know if the rock paintings were all made by the same people;
over what time-span they were created; the significance of the various paint-
ings; the meaning of the conventionalized symbols, and many more hidden
matters.

Three generations ago, Garrick Mallery wrote that "the interpretation of
the ancient forms is to be obtained, if at all, not by the discovery of any
hermeneutic key, but by an understanding of the modern forms, some of
which fortunately can be interpreted by living men; and when this is not the
case the more recent forms can be made intelligible ix least in part by a
thorough knowledge of the historic tribes, including their sociology, philo-
sophy, and arts, such as is becoming acquired, and of their sign language"
(Mallery, 1886, p. 16). What Mallery wrote then still holds today for the
Great Lakes rock paintings, except that now it would be extremely difficult
to find living men who could reliably interpret any of them. But it seems true
that a sound knowledge of Ojibwa — or if one prefers, central Algonkian —
mythology, legends, ritual practices, and material culture would go a long
way towards elucidating many of the symbols and pictures on the rocks.
Perhaps of all these aspects of culture, the myths and legends are the most
important, for often supernatural creatures are described in them. Following
these, a knowledge of the practices of the Midaywiwin or Grand Medicine
Society, with its accompanying mnemonic records on birchbark rolls, would
be helpful. Bark records of other sorts could also supply some clues. The sign
language may have some utility, as Mallery believed it would, for it was
widely used and understood; it should be examined with the interpretation of
the rock paintings in mind.

Except in the case of the paintings at Agawa Rock, we have no first-hand
interpretation of the meanings. The interpretation of these depends upon
copies made by Indians on birchbark for Henry Schoolcraft, and upon the
verbal descriptions of them which the Indians gave him. They suggest that
each symbol was intended to be read by itself, and the meanings then com-
bined and modified so as to make sense; the four disks over the two convex
lines at Agawa Rock are taken to indicate a four days' (or suns') journey
over the basin of the water. This is in marked distinction to the bark etchings,
in which the figures or symbols are arranged in horizontal lines, and the
"reading" or interpretation is intended to begin at the right or left and pro-

112

A shaman
in a sweat
lodge?

*% IT

ceed in either direction. The ideas are thus linked in a sequence. In the rock
paintings, it appears that they should be considered as a unit, though there
may be more than one unit in a group.

The afore-mentioned bark rolls of the Midaywiwin often afford important
clues to the identity of the symbols in the rocks. Several of them, for example,
show tree-like figures which are interpreted as the "tree of medicine." A
similar figure appears in Face IX at Site 7, along with a conventionalized
figure of a man inside a wigwam-like structure. From a knowledge of Ojibwa
culture it is possible to conjecture that this group was intended to show a
shaman taking a sweat bath in a sweat lodge (which is constructed like a
miniature wigwam), for this ceremony of physical and spiritual purification
had to be gone through before he could undertake an important ritual, and
that he would then use some of the "tree of medicine." Or again, one finds

113

Thunderbird,
Site #3

in the Miday rolls figures of birds, some of which are described as such power-
ful creatures as the grey eagle, others as the thunderbird. Both may be shown
naturalistically or conventionally. Similar figures occur on the rock paintings,
though the conventionalized form seems to be more common, and the assump-
tion, perhaps not warranted in all cases, is that the thunderbird is meant.
Unlike the eagle, the thunderbird was a supernatural creature who lived high
in the sky beyond the sight of men, but made his presence known by flapping
his wings to cause the thunder, and by blinking his eyes to cause the lightning.
Still a third symbol in the rock paintings may be identified by means of the
bark rolls, and this is the Great Lynx or Mishipizhiw. Mishipizhiw is also
a supernatural creature, highly dangerous, who inhabits the rapids on some
streams; for instance, the Manitou Rapids on the Rainy River, near Emo. He
appears in some of the bark rolls as a cat-like creature with large ears or
horns and a long tail. So frequent a motif did he become in Ojibwa art that
he is sometimes depicted on their woven bags. Mishipizhiw undoubtedly
appears at Site 36 in the normal form. John Tanner (James, A Narrative of
the Captivity . . . of John Tanner, p. 335), an early author who lived most of
his life among the Ojibwa, illustrated the Great Lynx as a cat-like creature
with spiny back, and from this and similar evidence, we may assume that the
spiny-backed creature which looks like a horned serpent at Site 8 is also
intended for him. It is worthy of note here that in the bark rolls, lines
radiating from a figure of a man or an animal are meant to imply "power" in
that figure; hence the spines on the back of the Great Lynx may be a device
for emphasizing his great supernatural power.

By comparing the pictures in the rock paintings one by one with those on
the birchbark rolls and other records referring to the Algonkians of the Great
Lakes area, it should be possible to identify many more of them. A similar
study of the supernatural beings in the mythology of the Algonkians is likely
to result in further identifications.

Even though the identity of one or more symbols or figures in a rock

114

Human

figure

from

Blindfold

Lake

site

i X

painting may have been established, the signification of the group as a whole
may still remain to be solved. It is not, apparently, a simple procedure of
adding one identification to another and getting a sort of sentence as a result.
Alternative meanings may be possible for one or more of the figures, and it
then becomes a matter of choosing between the alternatives until one has hit
upon a combination which makes sense. Of course, in some cases, the meaning
may be fairly obvious, but in others the solution may be extremely difficult.
Even the Miday bark rolls, although the commonest of Ojibwa records and
the most generally understood, are said to be sometimes quite beyond the
comprehension of Ojibwa men who have not seen that particular roll before,
as has been already noted. Likewise, the rock paintings — even the most
recent — may present difficulties in total interpretation which defy solution.

115

It is thus possible to compare the rock paintings in the Shield country with
the drawings to be seen in the Miday rolls and other incised bark and wood
records, and with the descriptions to be found in the myths and legends of
the historic occupants. By the same token, they may be compared with rock
paintings and other pictorial representations from other areas, and with the
descriptions in non-Algonkian mythologies and similar sources. It should
also be borne in mind that some of the Algonkian legends and myths may be
based upon rock paintings from an earlier, pre-Algonkian occupation of the
country, in which case the lines of distinction might be considerably blurred.
This does not rule out the possibility, however, that some of the rock paintings,
if they antedate the Algonkian occupation, may have only a superficial con-
nection with that occupation; indeed, they might well reflect a quite different
set of ideas and a different galaxy of supernatural beings and be executed in
a different style.

Such differences in style might be demonstrated by one or other of the
techniques described by Dewdney, and by the rather mechanical process of
putting each recorded symbol or figure on an index card. The cards might
then be sorted and the various symbols grouped together in such a way that
there was a progression by minor changes from a more obvious or naturalistic
form (e.g. a moose) to a conventional or abstract form. A procedure of this
sort might help to identify some symbols not now understood, but, perhaps
more important, it might be able to reveal whether there is a residue of sym-
bols which cannot be connected stylistically with others. If there are figures or
symbols which cannot be shown to be related to any of those connected with
Ojibwa life, there would be a presumption that they might be attributable to
people of another culture. Whether such a culture were earlier than the
Algonkian occupation would have to be proven by some acceptable method
of dating still to be devised.

After four seasons' work, a good representation of the kind of rock paintings
left by the Indians of the Great Lakes has been recorded, and is now available
for study. It will serve, if no more should be collected, to illustrate the con-
dition, variety, and geographical range of this menifestation of aboriginal
occupation of the Canadian Shield. As a form of expression the rock paintings
are interesting in themselves. But over and above this, they illuminate some
aspects of aboriginal life and culture. Further analysis should yield some
clues as to movements of people within the area, and may throw some light
upon beliefs held by those groups. Even though much of the information they
hold may remain forever hidden from us, the search for it is always alluring,
and each clue found is worthy of the effort.

116

Appendixes

Bibliography

Archaeological Reports, Appendix to the Report of the Minister of Education
(Ontario) for the years: 1893-4, Rock Paintings, or Petrographs, Rock
Paintings at Lake Massanog (Lake Mazinaw); 1904, Picture Writing; 1906,
Rock Paintings at Timagami District (Lady Evelyn and Diamond Lakes);
1907, Rock Paintings (mouth of Nipigon River) .

Beaugrand, H., New Studies of Canadian Folklore (Montreal, 1904).

Boas, Franz, Primitive Art (New York, 1955).

Bray, William, "Observations on the Indian method of picture-writing by
William Bray, Esq., in a letter to the Secretary read March 1, 1781,"
Archaeologia, VI, 1782, 159-62.

Brinton, Daniel G., The Lendpe and their legends; with the complete text and
symbols of the Walum Olum, a new translation, and an inquiry into its
authenticity (Philadelphia, 1885).

Christensen, Erwin O., Primitive Art (New York, 1955).

Coatsworth, Emerson S., The Indians of Quetico (Toronto, 1957).

Copway, George, The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the
Ojibway Nation (Boston, 1851).

Dewdney, Selwyn, "Stone-age art in the Canadian Shield," Canadian Art,
XVI (3), 1959, 164-7.

"The Quetico Pictographs," The Beaver (Hudson's Bay Company, Winni-
peg), Summer 1958, 15-22.

Hewitt, J. N. B., and William N. Fenton, "Some mnemonic pictographs
relating to the Iroquois Condolence Council," Journal of the Washington
Academy of Sciences, 35 (10), Oct. 15, 1945.

Hoffman, W. J., "Pictography and shamanistic rites of the Ojibwa," American
Anthropologist, ser. 1, I, 1888, 209-29.

"The Midewiwin or 'Grand Medicine Society' of the Ojibwa," Smith-
sonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, 7th Annual Report,
1891 (1892) (Washington, D.C., 1892).

Jackson, A. T., "Picture-writing of Texas Indians," University of Texas Publica-
tion no. 3809, Anthropological Papers, II, 1938.

James, Edwin (ed.), A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John
Tanner . . . (New York, 1830; Minneapolis, 1956).

Johnson, Townley, "Facsimile tracing and redrawing of rock-paintings," South
African Archaeological Bulletin, XIII (50), 1958, 67-9.

Keesing, Felix M., "The Menomini Indians of Wisconsin. A study of three
centuries of cultural contact and change," American Philosophical Society,
memoirs X, 1939.

118

Kinietz, W. Vernon, "Birch bark records among the Chippewa," Indiana

Academy of Science, Proceedings, XLIX, 1939, 38-40.
"The Indians of the western great lakes, 1615-1760," Occasional Con-
tributions from the Museum of Anthropology (University of Michigan),

X, 1940. See under Chippewa, 317-29.
Kohl, Johann, G., Kitchi-gami (trans, from German, London, 1860; with

Introduction by R. W. Fridley, Minneapolis, 1956).
Lee, Thomas E., "The second Sheguiandah expedition, Manitoulin Island,

Ontario," American Antiquity, XXI(l), 1955, 63-71.
Leechman, Douglas, "Some pictographs of southeastern British Columbia,"

Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 3rd ser, XLVIII, Sec. II, 1954,

77-85.

Leechman, Douglas, et ah, "Pictographs in Southwestern Alberta," Annual
Report (National Museum, Ottawa), 1953-4.

Lhote, Henri, The Search for the Tassili Frescoes (translated by A. H. Brod-
rick Hutchinson, London, 1959).

Lyford, Carrie A., "Ojibwa crafts (Chippewa)," Indian Handcrafts, V (Law-
rence, Kansas, 1953).

Macfie, John A., "The stories on the cliffs," Sylva, XV(6), 1959, 17-20.

MacNeish, Richard S., "An introduction to the archaeology of southeast Mani-
toba," National Museum of Canada, Bulletin 157 (Ottawa, 1958).

Mallery, Garrick, "Pictographs of the North American Indians: a preliminary
paper," Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, 4th
Annual Report, 1886, 3-256 (Washington, D.C., 1887).

"Picture-writing of the American Indians," ibid., 10th Annual Report,

1893, 3-807 (Washington, D.C., 1894).

"Sign language among the North American Indians compared with that

among other peoples and deaf-mutes," ibid., 1st Annual Report, 1879-1880,
263-552 (Washington, D.C., 1881).

Murdock, George P., Ethnographic Bibliography of North America (New
Haven, 1960).

National Film Board of Canada (Montreal), "Indian Rock Paintings," a

filmstrip in colour with manual.
Nelson, N. C, "South African rock pictures," American Museum of Natural

History, Guide Leaflet Series, 93, 1937.
Okladnikov, A. P., Shishkinskie Pisanitsy. Pamyatnik Drevney Kultury Pribai-

kalia (Irkutskoe Knizhnoe Izdatelstvo, 1959).

Naskalnye Risunki, Kamienykh Ostrovov (Irkutsk, 1960).

Olson, Sigurd F., "Painted rocks," National Parks Magazine (Washington),

XXXV (163), 1961, 4-7.
Quimby, George I., "New evidence links Chippewa to prehistoric cultures,"

Chicago Natural History Museum Bulletin, XXIX (1), 1958, 7-8.
Indian life in the Upper Great Lakes, 11,000 B.C. to A D. 1800

(Chicago, 1960).

Radin, Paul, and A. B. Reagan, "Ojibwa myths and tales," Journal of American

Folklore, XLI, 1928, 61-146.
Saunders, R. M., "The first introduction of European plants and animals into

Canada," Canadian Historical Review, XVI(4), 1935, 388-406.
Schoolcraft, Henry, The American Indians (Rochester, 1851).

119

Smith, Harlan I., An Album of Prehistoric Canadian Art, Canadian Dept. of

Mines Bulletin #37 (Victoria Memorial Museum Anthropological #8, 1923).
Sommers, Roger, Prehistoric rock art of the Federation of Rhodesia & Nyasa-

land: Paintings and descriptions by Elizabeth Goodall, C. K. Cooke [and]

J. Desmond Clark (Salisbury, 1959).
Sweetman, Paul W., "A preliminary report on the Peterborough petroglyphs,"

Ontario History, xlvii (3), 1955.
Voegelin, Erminie W., "Notes on Ojibwa — Ottawa pictography," Indiana

Academy of Science, Proceedings, LI, 1941, 44-7.
Warren, William W., "History of the Ojibways, based upon tradition and oral

statements," Minnesota Historical Collections, V, 1885.
Winchell, Newton H., The Aborigines of Minnesota . . . (St. Paul, 1911)
Windels, Fernand, The Lascaux Cave Paintings (New York, 1950).

120

Pictograph Sites

Sites marked by (*) are not illustrated in this book. Sites marked by (f ) are
outside of the Canadian Shield.

1957

1. Agnes Lake, south of Narrows, Que-
tico Provincial Park, 23, 24

2. Agnes Lake, centre, Q.P.P., 25, 58

3. "Ahsin Lake," southwest of Williams
Lake, Q.P.P., 24

4. *"Keewatin Lake," betwen Agnes and
Kawnipi, Q.P.P., 24

5. Lac la Croix, Irving Island, Q.P.P.,
3, 24-9, 82

6. *Lac la Croix, just west of site # 5,
Q.P.P.

7. Crooked Lake, Basswood River,
Minn., 16, 29-30, 113

8. Darky Lake, Q.P.P., 33, 34, 36, 40, 1 14

9. *Burt Lake, Q.P.P., 34

10. An unnamed lake north of Hurlburt
Lake, Q.P.P., 34

11. * Agnes Lake, central west shore,
Q.P.P., 34

1958

12. Cache Bay, Q.P.P., 16, 30, 32, 34, 40

13. Northern Lights Lake, Nelson Bay,

14. Northern Lights Lake, Trafalgar
Bay, 32

15. Pictured Lake, southwest of Fort
William, 54, 73, 74

16. Hegman Lake, Superior National
Forest, Minnesota, 16, 36, 38

17. Kawishiwi River, south of Lake
Alice, S.N.F., Minn., 37

18. Burntside Lake, west of Ely, Minn.,
37, 73

19. *Island River, south of Isabella Lake,
S.N.F., Minn., 36, 37

20. *Nett Lake, Minnesota (petroglyphs),
34, 38, 42

21. Lower Manitou Lake, west shore of
Narrows, 71, 72

22. Painted Narrows, Rainv Lake, 16, 40,
89

23. Namakan Narrows, north entrance,
38, 39

24. Namakan Narrows, centre, 38, 39

25. Namakan Lake, island in east end,
38, 39

26. Cuttle Lake, small site, 69, 70

27. Cuttle Lake, large site, 10, 11, 69,
70, 71

28. Southwest of Sioux Narrows, Lake
of the Woods, 46, 48, 49

29. Blindfold Lake, 2, 46, 55

30. *"Irene Lake," east of Kenora

31. Northern Twin Lake, 4-7

32. * Orient Bay, south of Royal Windsor
Lodge, 75, 76

33. *French River, east of Recollect
Falls, 93

34. Ninth Lake, East Spanish River, 88,
89

35. Fairy Point, Lake Missinaibi, 2, 84-87

36. Agawa Rock, Lake Superior Pro-
vincial Park, 10, 14, 16, 17, 79-82,
113, 114

1959

37. Mazinaw Lake, Bon Echo Provincial
Park, 22, 94-100

38. Little Mazinaw Lake, south of Bon
Echo, 94, 95, 100

39. Collins Inlet, Georgian Bay, 92

121

40. Diamond Lake, Timagami district,
91, 94

41. "Bear Island, Lake Timagami, 91, 92

42. Northwest Arm, Lake Timagami, 92

43. * Upper Grassy Lake, east end, 90

44. * Upper Grassy Lake, centre, 90, 91

45. Ferris Lake, 90

46. :;:Terrier Lake, north of Nakina, 84

47. Echo Rock, Lake Nipigon, 75, 76, 77

48. Gull Bay (I), 76, 77

49. Gull Bay (II), 76, 77

50. Gull Bay (III), 76, 77

51. Red Rock, mouth of Nipigon River,
16,17,54,74

52. Mameigwess Lake, 52, 67, 68, 69

53. :!Tndian Lake, 69

54. Carling Lake, Vermilion River, 65

55. Vincent Lake (I), 65, 66

56. Vincent Lake (II), 65, 66

57. *Schist Lake, 66

58. Cochrane River, northwest of Deer
Lake, 57, 58

59. Sharpstone Lake, 60, 61

60. Bloodvein River, 52, 57, 58, 59

61. Grassy Narrows, 62

62. Delaney Lake (I), 62

63. Delaney Lake (II), 62

64. White Dog, Islington Indian Reserve,
63

65. An unnamed lake west of Rex Lake,
62

66. Near portage into west end of Rex
Lake, 62

67. Dryberry Lake (I), 67

68. Drybery Lake (II), 67

69. Picture Rock Island, Whiteflsh Bay,
53, 54, 55

70. Cliff Island, Sunset Channel, 42

71. ^Sunset Channel (petroglyphs), 35,
42

72. Quetico Lake (I), Q.P.P., 35, 93

73. *Quetico Lake (II), Q.P.P., 35

74. Little Missinaibi Lake (I), 88

75. Little Missinaibi Lake (II), 88

76. Little Missinaibi Lake (III), 88

77. Killarney Bay, Georgian Bay, 92

78. Scotia Lake, 88, 89, 90, 94

1960

79. *f Burnt Bluff, I, Fayette Peninsula,
105

80. *f Burnt Bluff II, Fayette Peninsula,
105

81. * Upper French River, west of Key-
stone Lodge, 93, 94

82. Upper French River, west of Key-
stone Lodge, 93, 94

83. *Pine Point, Lac des Mille Lacs, 72,
73

84. *Turtle River (I), 69

85. Turtle River (II), 69

86. Red Lake (Ont.), 63, 64

87. *Cliff Lake, 64

88. Route Lake (I), 64

89. Route Lake (II), 64

90. Route Lake (III), 64

91. Hayter Peninsula, Lake of the
Woods, 49, 50

92. Devil's Hole, Whitefish Bay, Lake
of the Woods, 51, 52

93. Annie Island, Whitefish Bay, Lake
of the Woods, 49, 50, 51, 54

94. * Portage Bay, Lake of the Woods, 42

95. Picture Rock Point, Lake of the
Woods, 42

96. *Ball Lake, English River

97. *Shoal Lake (petroglyphs), 34, 42

98. Devil's Bay, Whitefish Bay, Lake of
the Woods, 49, 51

99. Whitefish Bay, south of Devil's Bay,
Lake of the Woods, 49, 52, 53

100. Sabaskong-Obabikon Channel, Lake
of the Woods, 43

101. *Obabikon Narrows (lichenoglyphs) ,
43

102. Painted Rock Island, south of Aul-
neau Peninsula, Lake of the Woods,
43, 44

122

Index

abstraction, 18, 20, 44, 55,

58, 75, 84, 95, 98, 99
Agnes Lake, 23, 24, 34
Algonkian, 95, 108, 112,

114, 116
Altamira, 19, 26
animal, 18, 79, 89, 92, 97,

109
antelope, 25
archaeology, 4 6
Arctic, Canadian, 10
Armstrong, 55, 65
artist, 16, 18, 19, 20, 58,

86, 110
Assiniboine, 41
Aulneau Peninsula, 41, 43

Basswood Lake, Minn., 23,
104

bear, 24, 44, 48, 63, 94, 107
beaver, 107; tails, III
Beland, Jacques, 91
Belaney, Archie (Grey

Owl), 88
Beschel, Roland, 10
binder, 1, 2, 17, 28, 111;

egg, 17, 111; glue, 17,

111; grease, 17, 111;

oil, 17, 111
birchbark, picture-writing

on, 12, 14, 16, 25, 48,

59, 60, 63, 109, 112,

114, 115, 116
bird, 55, 57, 67, 109
bird-men, 98
Biscotasing (Bisco), 88
bison or buffalo, 52, 58,

68, 97, 103
Boas, Franz, 19, 20
Bolz, J. A., 39

Bon Echo Provincial Park,
94

boulder, painting on, 92
Boyle, David, 10, 102
Breuil, l'Abbe, 102
British Columbia, 7
brush (painting), 17, 111
Bureau of American Eth-
nology, 102
Bushman, South African, 19

Canadian Shield region, 4,
2, 22, 84, 91, 94, 99,
100, 105, 106, 110, 116

carbon-dating, 28

caribou, 19, 29, 35, 84, 107

catfish, 48

cat-like creature, 114

cave paintings, Europe, 18,

25; Altamira, 18; Las-

caux, 18, 59
cervids (deer family), 19,

Chapleau, 88
Chingwauk, 79, 80, 82
clam, 48

classification of symbols, 18
colour, 6, 8, 9, 17, 30, 37,
38, 39, 43, 49, 53, 67,
76, 97, 105, 111
Copway, G., 12, 26, 82, 91
Cree, 13, 77, 109
Creighton, Vincent, 84
cultures, 16, 18, 46, 95, 99;
Old Copper, 64, 108;
Early Woodland Cop-
per, 108, 110; Middle
Woodland Copper,
108; Eastern Woodland
Copper, 109, 110;

Late Woodland Copper,
108, 110

Dailey, Robert C, 102
Dalgetty, Keith, 12
dating of pictographs, 10, 11
deer, 19, 25, 64, 71, 82, 111
Deer Lake, 14, 57
Dennis, Keith, 75, 76, 92
Densmore, Francis, 48
Devil's Gap, Kenora, 43
distortion, 20, 53, 69
dog, 54, 63, 73
duck, 64, 107

eagle, 48, 53, 67, 80, 114

eagle-man, 58, 60

elk, 19, 35, 107

Ely, Minn., 35, 36, 37, 38

Emerson, Norman, 79

Emo, 114

English River district, 13,

62, 63
Eskimo, 54

Europe, 19, 48, 77, 102

Fadden, Wm., 43, 46, 48,

49, 50
fantasy, 20, 40
Fayette Peninsula, 105
feldspar (mineral), 38
finger-painting, 17, 37, 46
fires, 43, 56, 89
fish, 7, 14, 39, 69, 94, 107;

roe, 111; glue, 1 1 1
fisher, 107

Fisher, Francis, 13, 63
Fort Frances, 13, 35, 40, 69
Fort William, 73

123

fox, 26, 29, 107
France, 102
French Lake, 7, 23

Gananoque Lakes, 100
Georgian Bay, 92, 109
glaciation, 38

glossary of symbols :
Schoolcraft, 91; Cop-
way, 91

Gogama, 90

Gogama district, 2, 84, 90,
91

Gogama-Timagami area, 88
goose, 107

Great Lakes region, 82, 84,

105, 114
Greenland, 10

Greenman, Emerson, F.,
107

Grey Owl,- see Belaney
"Griffin," 77
Grondines Point, 93
gull's eggs, 111

hand smears, 24; hand-
prints, 26, 34, 53, 54,
62, 84

Harmon, Daniel W., 93

head-dress, 18, 37, 57, 58,
80, 86

heron, 89

Heron Bay, 86

High Falls, 88

Hoffman, 12

horse, 79, 80, 82

Hubachek, Frank B., 12,
36

Hudson Bay, 105, 106
Hueston, W. T., 88
Huron, 109

Ignace, 52

interpretation of picto-
graphs, 12, 24, 79, 111,
112

iron, 5, 6, 17, 30, 34, 37,
43, 70, 111

James Bay, 106
jay, Canada, 98

Kawartha Lakes, 94
Kenora, 2, 4, 43, 67, 109

Kenyon, Walter, 40, 108
kingfisher, 80
Kohl, J. G., 12, 25
Kundert, A. E., 102

Labrador, 105

Lac le Ronge, Sask., 56

Lac Seul, 65

Lake Abitibi, 91

Lakehead (Canadian), 102

Lake Huron, 77, 92

Lake Michigan, 105

Lake Nipigon, see Nipigon

country
Lake Nipissing, 92, 93, 94,

107

Lake Saganaga, 30

Lake Simcoe, 94

Lake Superior, 3, 77, 79,
82, 92, 108, 109; east
shore, 17; north shore,
13, 14, 74, 75, 80, 86;
south shore, 75, 80

Lake Superior Provincial
Park, 82

Lake Winnipeg watershed,
58

Lake of the Woods, 13, 14,
22, 35, 38, 40, 41, 42,
45, 66, 97, 105

Lascaux, 19, 26, 59

Lawson, 1

ledge, 2, 53, 69, 70, 74, 79,
82

Lee, Thos. E., 107
Lhote, Henri, 102
lichen, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11,

16, 30, 44, 54, 57, 58,

70, 84, 93, 105, 110
lichenoglyph, 40, 43, 75
lime, 5, 6, 11, 30, 42, 65,

68, 71, 105
Little Grand Rapids, Man.,

lodge, 29; sweat or steam,

4, 113; Miday, 44
Longfellow, 14
loon, 67, 107
lynx, 14, 114

Macfle, John A., 56, 65, 91
Mackenzie, Alexander, 30
MacNeish, R. S., 108
Madison, Wis., 102

magic, 59, 60

Mallery, Colonel Garrick,

12, 42, 75, 112
Manitoba, 4, 8, 56, 77, 109
Manitoulin Island, 109
Maymaygwayshi, 13, 14,

24, 51, 62, 69, 73, 74,

77, 88, 89, 90, 91
Mclnnes, Wm, 10, 42, 56,

63, 67, 71, 72, 74, 75,

102

medicine, 63; Grand Medi-
cine Society, see Mi-
daywiwin; rock medi-
cine, 14; tree of medi-
cine, 113

Michigan, 82

Miday, 13, 44, 60, 109

Miday wiwin (Grand Medi-
cine Society), 60, 63,
109, 112

Minaki, 55

Minnesota, 8, 12, 22, 29,
33, 54, 105, 108

Minnesota Historical Soci-
ety, 104

Mishipizhiw, 14, 17, 79, 82,
86, 114

Missanabie, origin of name,
87

monkey, 14

Montagnais-Naskapi, 77

moose, 7, 19, 24, 25, 30,
32, 34, 36, 39, 46, 52,
62, 64, 68, 86, 104,
107, 111

Museum, Royal Ontario, 3,
7, 13, 39, 40, 46, 56,
104, 105, 108; Chicago
Museum of Natural
History, 108; National
Museum of Canada,
107, 108

Muskoka-Parry Sound area,
94, 107

muzinuhigun, 87, 95

Myeengun, 80, 82

Mythological associations,
100, 116

Naskapi, 77

naturalism, 20, 24, 54, 76,
82, 99

124

Neeland, R. H., 68
Neguagon Reserve, 24
Nipigon country, 22, 51, 58,

63, 65, 66, 74, 75, 76,

77, 105, 108
Nipissing (tribe), 109
North America, 17, 102
Norwood, Joseph, 38
Nova Scotia, 102
Nute, Grace Lee, 38, 102
Nym Lake, 69

Oberholtzer, Ernest, 35
offerings, 2, 14, 42, 46, 49,

53, 110
Ogopogo, 43

Ojibwa, 12, 14, 25, 37, 41,
49, 56, 59, 69, 77, 87,
90, 91, 109, 112, 114,
115, 116

Okladnikov, A. P., 46, 102

Olson, Sigurd, 36, 102

Ontario, 8, 22, 102, 105,
106, 109, 111

Ontario Department of
Lands and Forests, 3,
7, 8, 53, 90, 104

Ottawa (tribe), 109

Ottawa watershed, 93

otter, 107

Ottertail, Chas., 24

overhang, 6, 23, 33, 35, 52

overpainting, 57, 58, 68

panther, 80
parklands, 58
Patricia district, 22
pelican, 30
Peters, Fred, 72
petroglyphs (rock carvings),

32, 34, 35„ 38, 40, 42,

88, 91, 94
pickerel (U.S. "walleye"),

Pickle Crow, 65

pigment, 10, 11, 28, 37, 40,

55, 57, 63, 70, 93, 105,

111

pipe, man smoking, 25
Plains Indians, 19
porcupine, 58

Porcupine Mountain State

Park, Mich., 82
Port Arthur, 75
pottery, 16, 99, 108
prairies, 40

prayer sticks, 14, 49, 50,
53

projection, psychological,
68

Puckasaw, 79

Quebec, Province of, 8, 22,

77, 109
Queen's University, 10
Quetico Foundation, 3, 104
Quetico Provincial Park, 3,

7, 8, 12, 23, 24, 29, 30,

35, 40, 58, 69, 104
Quetico-Superior region, 22,

rabbit or hare, 34, 97, 98,
107

rabbit-man, 98
rabbit-skin glue, 111
Radisson and Groseilliers,
76

Rainy Lake, 13, 14, 40, 42
Rainy River, 105, 106, 109,
114

Ranier, Minn., 35

Red Lake (Ont.), 2, 37, 56,

57, 63, 87
reindeer, 82

rock: gabbro, 37; granite,
11, 25, 29, 30, 36, 48,
51, 55, 62, 76, 94, 110;
quartzite, 91; schist,
38, 90; sandstane, 82;
sedimentary, 74
surface of, 110; nature
of, 16

rock shelters, 69

Rogers, Edward S., 56

Rogers, Jean H., 56

Ronda, 90

Sabaskong Bay, 43, 51
Sahara Desert, 102
St. Lawrence-Great Lakes
lowlands, 99

St. Lawrence lowlands, 94

St. Thomas, 68

Sanderson, Canon Maurice,

13, 87
Saskatchewan, 8, 56

Sault Ste Marie (the Soo),

14, 79, 88
Saulteaux (Saulteurs, Soto),

13, 109

Schoolcraft, Henry, 10, 12,

14, 26, 79, 91, 112
seepage, 46, 71

serpent or snake, 38, 43, 44,
48, 67, 74, 80, 93, 107,
111, 114

Severn River, 94

shaman, 14, 30, 60, 80, 113

Sheppard, Robert, 63

Siberia, 19, 46, 102

Sioux, 29, 108

Sioux Lookout, 55, 56, 65

Sioux Narrows, 43, 46, 53

site, choice of, 110, 111

South Africa, 19, 102

Spain, 102

spatial organization, (com-
position & design), 16

sturgeon, 30, 44, 64

style, 82, 112, 116

subject matter of picto-
graphs, 18, 20

Sudbury, 88

Superior National Forest,

36, 37
Sweetman, Paul W., 94
Switzerland, 10
symmetry, 20, 46

Tanner, John, 114
tectiform, 50, 98
Thousand Islands, 94
thunderbird, 24, 51, 89, 93,

111, 114; nest, 51
tobacco, 49, 65
Toronto, 28

Tower Reserve, Minn., 37
trout, 64, 74, 75
Trygg, Wm., 36, 37
Turner, George, 91, 92
turtle, 43, 62, 69, 80, 111

United States, 12, 35, 102,
105

125

University of Michigan, 107
University of Toronto, 79,
102

Verendrye, Pierre Gaultier,

Sieur de la, 48
Vikings, 13

Warren, Wm. W., 12

water level, 6, 36, 39, 45,
63, 88, 94

waterside rocks, 13

weathering and erosion, 6,
17, 53, 57, 62, 65, 76,
79, 86, 93, 95, 110

Weyndiow, 69

Weyzuhkaychahk ("Whis-
key Jack"), 98

Whitefish Bay, 41, 53, 46,
49, 53

White River, 88

Wilderness Research Cen-
ter, Quetico-Superior,
12, 36, 104

Willisville, 92

Wisconsin, 108

wolf, 107

126

Acknowledgments

In addition to the general and special acknowledgements made herein
Mr. Dewdney is anxious to record the following:

"Above all I should like to record the invaluable aid in tracking down
ethnological clues furnished by the late Chief James Horton of Manitou
Rapids. A gentle man of unfailing courtesy and unpretentious dignity, greatly
gifted as a teller of Ojibwa tales, his death was an incalculable loss. Of other
Ojibwa who generously shared with me the lore of their forefathers, I should
particularly like to mention Messrs. Norval Morriseau and Thomas Paishk
of Red Lake, Mr. Jack Bushy of Ignace, and Mr. Charles Friday of Seine
River. I am also especially indebted to Dr. C. L. Hannay of London, Ontario,
whose superb photographs of the Grassy Narrows scroll made it possible
for me to reproduce it in accurate detail.

"To the many other friends who have cheerfully provided hospitality,
transportation, clues, directions, and helpful information, both in the field
and by correspondence, my personal thanks. Without the help of each, this
book would have been the poorer."

Mr. Kidd wishes especially to thank Dr. and Mrs. E. S. Rogers for making
numerous suggestions concerning his manuscript.

Dr. V. B. Meen also read the manuscript and offered helpful advice.

127

continued from front flap

Shield country, and commenting on
what the pictographs reveal of their
makers' attitudes to their external
world and of their thinking.

This is a book which will appeal
to a wide audience: to those interested
in primitive art forms and in Cana-
dian art in general, to all students of
the early history of North America,
to travellers who in increasing num-
bers follow the canoe trails of the
Shield lakes and rivers.

selwyn dewdney is a well-known
Canadian artist and author. A
Bachelor of Arts from the University
of Toronto and an Associate of the
Ontario College of Art, Mr. Dewdney
is a former high school teacher, and
is currently art therapist in three
London, Ont., hospitals and executive
director of the Artists' Workshop of
London, He has published a novel
and a map-reading story for children,
and has done book illustrations for
numerous school texts, as well as
several historical murals. Readers of
this book will at once realize that his
second home is a canoe on the waters
of the Northwest.

KENNETH EARL KEDD is Curator of

Ethnology at the Royal Ontario
Museum. A graduate of the Univer-
sity of Toronto, he has done extensive
.work in archaeology in Ontario,
notably at the French mission site of
Ste Marie I, work which he described
in The Excavation of Ste Marie I.
He is a member of the Quetico
Scientific Advisory Committee, and
has been a vice-president of the
Society for American Archaeology.

Other Books in the Quetico Foundation Series

THE INDIANS OF QUETICO by Emerson 5. Coatsworth

A fascinating picture of the life of the Ojibwa Indians before the coming of the
white man to the area which is now Quetico Provincial Park in Northern Ontario.
The author traces the outlines of this Indian civilization — the Ojibwa social
organization, family life, the quest for food, their handicrafts, and the world of the
supernatural with which they lived in such intimacy.

58 pages, 5x7 inches, $1.75

QUETICO GEOLOGY by V. B. Meen

The Quetico area, with the Superior National Forest on the northern border of
Minnesota, covers more than a million acres of tre^s, rocks, and lakes, and is the
only easily accessible wilderness country on the continent that is still in its original
primitive state. This informative and attractive book provides a geological history
of the area, and tells the traveller what rocks and minerals to watch for.

68 pages, frontispiece and 24 line drawings, 5X7 inches, $2.50

CANOE TRAILS THROUGH QUETICO by Keith Denis
Drawings by Selwyn Dewdney

Quetico Park, says Blair Fraser, "must surely be the finest canoe country in the
world." In this book it is described by a man who was born in the Quetico country
and knows it as few others do. Detailed instructions about supplies and routes are
provided, and delightfully illustrated.

84 pages, 6x9 inches, $3.50

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